BeverlyCleary.com provides info about children's author Beverly Cleary
Title
Beverly Cleary
Description
own story is as lively and irresistible as any of her novels. She was born Beverly Bunn in McMinnville, Oregon, and, until she was old enough to attend school, lived on a farm in Yamhill, a town so small it had no library. Her mother arranged with the State Library to have books sent to Yamhill and acted as librarian in a lodge room upstairs over a bank. Beverly learned to love books there.
Leaving Yamhill did not distress me, for home was wherever my parents lived. I looked forward to Portland, where I would have children close by to play with, school, a real teacher who would teach me to read. -- A Girl from Yamhill
When the family moved to Portland, where Beverly attended grammar school and high school, she soon found herself in the low reading circle, an experience that has given her sympathy for the problems of struggling readers. By the third grade she had conquered reading and spent much of her childhood either with books or on her way to and from the public library. Before long her school librarian was suggesting that she should write for boys and girls when she grew up. The idea appealed to her, and she decided that someday she would write the books she longed to read but was unable to find on the library shelves, funny stories about her neighborhood and the sort of children she knew.
