Cleary, Beverly

views updated

Beverly Cleary

Personal

Born April 12, 1916, in McMinnville, OR; daughter of Chester Lloyd (a fruit farmer) and Mable (a teacher and homemaker; maiden name, Atlee) Bunn; married Clarence T. Cleary (an accountant), October 6, 1940; children: Marianne Elizabeth Santiago, Malcolm James (twins). Education: Chaffey Junior College (Ontario, CA), A.A., 1936; University of California—Berkeley, B.A., 1938; University of Washington—Seattle, B.A. (librarianship), 1939. Religion: Protestant. Hobbies and other interests: Travel, walking, needlework, reading fiction and biographies.

Addresses

Home—Carmel, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins Children's Books, 1350 6th Ave., New York, NY 10019.

Career

Author of children's books. Public Library, Yakima, WA, children's librarian, 1939-40; Camp Knight, Oakland, CA, junior hostess, 1942-43; U.S. Army Hospital, Oakland, CA, post librarian, 1942-45; freelance writer, beginning 1950.

Member

Authors Guild, Authors League of America.

Awards, Honors

Young Readers' Choice Award, Pacific Northwest Library Association, 1957, for Henry and Ribsy, 1960, for Henry and the Paper Route, 1968, for The Mouse and the Motorcycle, 1971, for Ramona the Pest, and 1980, for Ramona and Her Father; Dorothy Canfield Fisher Memorial Children's Book Award, 1958, for Fifteen, 1961, for Ribsy, and 1985, for Dear Mr. Henshaw; Notable Book citation, American Library Association (ALA), 1961, for Jean and Johnny, 1966, for The Mouse and the Motorcycle, 1978, for Ramona and Her Father, and 1984, for Dear Mr. Henshaw; South Central Iowa Association of Classroom Teachers' Youth Award, 1968, Hawaii Association of School Librarians/Hawaii Library Association Nene Award, 1971, New England Round Table of Children's Librarians Honor Book Award, 1972, Sue Hefley Award, Louisiana Association of School Librarians, 1972, and Surrey School Book Award, Surrey School District, 1974, all for The Mouse and the Motorcycle; Nene Award, Hawaii Association of School Librarians/Hawaii Library Association, 1968, for Ribsy, 1969, for Ramona the Pest, 1972, for Runaway Ralph, and 1980, for Ramona and Her Father; William Allen White Award, Kansas Association of School Libraries/Kansas Teachers' Association, 1968, for The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and 1975, forSocks; Georgia Children's Book Award, University of Georgia College of Education, 1970, Sequoyah Children's Book Award, Oklahoma Library Association, 1971, and Massachusetts Children's Book Award nomination, 1977, all for Ramona the Pest; New England Round Table of Children's Librarians Honor Book Award, 1972, for Henry Huggins; Charlie Mae Simon Award, Arkansas Elementary School Council, 1973, for Runaway Ralph, and 1984, for Ramona Quimby, Age Eight; Distinguished Alumna Award, University of Washington, 1975; Laura In-galls Wilder Award, ALA, 1975, for contributions to children's literature; Golden Archer Award, University of Wisconsin, 1977, for Socks and Ramona the Brave; Children's Choice Election Award, second place, 1978; Mark Twain Award, Missouri Library Association/Missouri Association of School Librarians, 1978, for Ramona the Brave; Newbery Honor Book Award, ALA, and Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor Award, both 1978, People Honor Book Award, International Board on Books for Young People, Tennessee Children's Book Award, Tennessee Library Association, Utah Children's Book Award, Children's Library Association of Utah, and Garden State Award, New Jersey Library Association, all 1980, and Land of Enchantment Children's Award, and Texas Bluebonnet Award, both 1981, all for Ramona and Her Father; Regina Medal from Catholic Library Association, 1980, for distinguished contributions to literature; American Book Award, 1981, for Ramona and Her Mother; de Grummond Award, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi medallion, both 1982, both for distinguished contributions to children's literature; Newbery Honor Book Award, ALA, and American Book Award nomination, both 1982, and Charles Near Simon Award, Arkansas Elementary School Council, Michigan Young Readers Award, and Buck-eye Children's Book Award, all 1984, all for Ramona Quimby, Age Eight; Garden State Children's Choice Award, 1982, and Buckeye Children's Book Award, 1985, both for Ramona and Her Mother, 1984, for Ramona Quimby, Age Eight, and 1985, for Ralph S. Mouse; English Award, California Association of Teachers of English, and Golden Kite Award, Society of Children's Book Writers, both 1983, and Iowa Children's Choice Award, Iowa Educational Media Association, 1984, all for Ralph S. Mouse; Christopher Award, 1983, and Newbery Medal, Commonwealth Silver Medal, Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award, and New York Times notable book citation, all 1984, all for Dear Mr. Henshaw; Hans Christian Andersen award U.S. author nominee, 1984; Everychild honor citation, 1985, for thirty-five-year contribution to children's literature; Ludington Award, Educational Paperback Association, 1987; honor book citation, Hawaii Association of School Librarians and the Children/Youth Section of Hawaii Library Association, 1988; honorary doctorate, Cornell College, 1993; in 1995, Portland, Oregon, created the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden in Grant Park, with statues of Henry Huggins, Ramona, and Ribsy; National Medal of Arts presented by President George W. Bush, 2003. Cleary's books have received more than thirty-five state awards based on the direct votes of her young readers.

Writings

"HENRY HUGGINS" SERIES

Henry Huggins, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1950.

Henry and Beezus, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1952.

Henry and Ribsy, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1954.

Henry and the Paper Route, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1957.

Henry and the Clubhouse, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1962.

Ribsy, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1964.

"BEEZUS AND RAMONA" SERIES

Beezus and Ramona, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1955.

Ramona the Pest (also see below), illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1968.

Ramona the Brave, illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, Morrow (New York, NY), 1975.

Ramona and Her Father (also see below), illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, Morrow (New York, NY), 1977.

Ramona and Her Mother (also see below), illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, Morrow (New York, NY), 1979.

Ramona Quimby, Age Eight (also see below), illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, Morrow (New York, NY), 1981.

Cutting up with Ramona! Paper Cutout Fun for Boys and Girls (activity book), illustrated by JoAn L. Scribner, Dell (New York, NY), 1983.

Ramona Forever (also see below), illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, Morrow (New York, NY), 1984.

The Ramona Quimby Diary (activity book), illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, Morrow (New York, NY), 1984.

The Beezus and Ramona Diary (activity book), illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, Morrow (New York, NY), 1986.

Meet Ramona Quimby (omnibus; includes Ramona the Pest, Ramona and Her Father, Ramona and Her Mother, Ramona Quimby, Age Eight, and Ramona Forever), illustrated by Louis Darling and Alan Tiegreen, Dell (New York, NY), 1989.

Ramona's World, illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, Morrow (New York, NY), 1999.

"RALPH S. MOUSE" SERIES

The Mouse and the Motorcycle, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1965.

Runaway Ralph, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1970.

Ralph S. Mouse, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, Morrow (New York, NY), 1982.

"JANET AND JIMMY" SERIES

The Real Hole, illustrated by Mary Stevens, Morrow (New York, NY), 1960, revised edition illustrated by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan, Morrow (New York, NY), 1986.

Two Dog Biscuits, illustrated by Mary Stevens, Morrow (New York, NY), 1961, revised edition illustrated by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan, Morrow (New York, NY), 1986.

The Growing-up Feet, illustrated by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan, Morrow (New York, NY), 1987.

Janet's Thingamajigs, illustrated by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan, Morrow (New York, NY), 1987.

FOR CHILDREN

Ellen Tebbits, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1951.

Otis Spofford, illustrated by Louis Darling, Morrow (New York, NY), 1953.

Leave It to Beaver (fictionalization of television series), Berkley (New York, NY), 1960.

The Hullabaloo ABC, illustrated by Earl Hollander, Parnassus Press (Berkeley, CA), 1960, illustrated by Ted Rand, Morrow (New York, NY), 1998.

Beaver and Wally (sequel to Leave It to Beaver), Berkley (New York, NY), 1961.

Emily's Runaway Imagination, illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush, Morrow (New York, NY), 1961.

Mitch and Amy, illustrated by George Porter, Morrow (New York, NY), 1967.

Socks, illustrated by Beatrice Darwin, Morrow (New York, NY), 1973.

Dear Mr. Henshaw, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, Morrow (New York, NY), 1983.

Lucky Chuck, illustrated by J. Winslow Higginbottom, Morrow (New York, NY), 1984.

Muggie Maggie, illustrated by Kay Life, Morrow (New York, NY), 1990.

Strider (sequel to Dear Mr. Henshaw), illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, Morrow (New York, NY), 1991.

Petey's Bedtime Story, illustrated by David Small, Morrow (New York, NY), 1993.

YOUNG-ADULT NOVELS

Fifteen, illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush, Morrow (New York, NY), 1956.

The Luckiest Girl, Morrow (New York, NY), 1958.

Jean and Johnny, illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush, Morrow (New York, NY), 1959.

Sister of the Bride, illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush, Morrow (New York, NY), 1963.

OTHER

The Sausage at the End of the Nose (play), Children's Book Council (New York, NY), 1974.

A Girl from Yamhill: A Memoir, Morrow (New York, NY), 1988.

My Own Two Feet: A Memoir, Morrow (New York, NY), 1995.

Contributor of short stories to periodicals, including Redbook, Wigwag, and Woman's Day, and of articles to newspapers and periodicals, including Horn Book, Instructor, Oklahoma Librarian, and New York Times. Contributor of short stories to A Newbery Halloween: A Dozen Scary Stories by Newbery Award-winning Authors, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh; A Newbery Zoo: A Dozen Animal Stories by Newbery Award-winning Authors, edited by Greenberg and Waugh, Delacorte, 1995; It's Great to Be Eight!, Scholastic, 1997; It's Fine to Be Nine!, Scholastic, 1998; It's Heaven to Be Seven!, Scholastic, 1999; and It's Terrific to Be Ten!, Scholastic, 2000.

Cleary's works have been translated into about forty languages.

Adaptations

Pied Piper produced recordings and filmstrips of Henry and the Clubhouse, 1962, and Ribsy, 1964; Miller-Brody produced recordings and filmstrips of Ramona and Her Father, 1979, Beezus and Ramona, Henry Huggins, Henry and Ribsy, Ramona and Her Mother, and Ramona the Brave, all 1980, Ramona Quimby, Age Eight, and Henry and Beezus, both 1981, Ralph S. Mouse, 1983, and Dear Mr. Henshaw, 1984. A record album of Ramona and Her Father was released by Newbery Award Recording, 1978. Filmic Archives released videos of several episodes from the "Ramona" series, including Ramona's Bad Day; The Great Hair Argument; New Pajamas; Squeakerfoot; Mystery Meal; Ramona the Patient; Rainy Sunday; Goodbye, Hello; The Perfect Day; and Siblingitis. Listening Library produced audio cassettes of Henry and Beezus, 1998, and Ramona's World, 1999, and has produced audio books of Beezus and Ramona, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Ralph S. Mouse, Ramona and Her Father, Ramona and Her Mother, Ramona the Pest, Ramona the Brave, Ramona Forever, and Ramona Quimby, Age Eight. McGraw-Hill Media released the video Dear Mr. Henshaw, 1989. Public Broadcasting System (PBS) produced the television series Ramona, 1988-89; actress Sarah Polley starred as Ramona. A six-episode series based on The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Runaway Mouse, and Ralph S. Mouse was produced by Churchill Films for the American Broadcasting Companies (ABC-TV); the program won a Peabody Award. Adaptations of the characters Henry Huggins and Ribsy have appeared on Japanese, Swedish, and Danish television. Ramona Quimby, a play by Len Jenkins, was produced by TheatreWorks U.S.A. in New York, NY, and was published by Dramatic Publishing, 1994. The play Henry and Ramona was produced by the Waterloo Community Playhouse, Waterloo, IA. A doll based on the character of Ramona was produced by Learning Links.

Sidelights

Acknowledged as one of the most beloved authors of children's literature, Beverly Cleary has been writing books for young people for over half a century, a period during which she has retained her popularity, critical acclaim, and relevance. A prolific writer with a wide range of interests who has sold over ten million hardcover books and many more paperbacks, Cleary has authored picture books, realistic fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction, and has written for audiences ranging from preschoolers through young adults.

Cleary is perhaps best known as the creator of several child characters who live in and around Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon, an area familiar to the author from her own childhood: Henry Huggins, a well-meaning middle grader who gets into scrapes with his dog, the lovable mutt Ribsy; and the Quimby sisters, Beatrice—nicknamed Beezus—a responsible girl who is Henry's friend, and her pesky younger sister, Ramona. Cleary's most popular creation, Ramona Quimby was first introduced as a peripheral character in the first "Henry Huggins" book, but soon took on a life—and prompted a series—of her own. Active, imaginative, independent, sometimes obnoxious, but never malicious, Ramona is generally considered a particularly well-rounded characterization. Cleary is also well known as the creator of a fantasy series for middle graders featuring Ralph S.—for Smart—Mouse, an anthropomorphic rodent whose thirst for adventure and love for motorcycles leads him into exciting situations that take him far from home. In addition, the author has received praise for writing young-adult novels that are considered pioneering works for their focus on young women who mature through their relationships with the opposite sex as well as their families and friends.

A Rural Childhood

Born in McMinnville, Oregon, Cleary was the only child of Lloyd and Mable Bunn. Her great-grandparents on the Bunn side, Jacob and Harriet Hawn, crossed the plains in 1843 on the first covered wagon to Oregon; after they settled, Jacob Hawn built the first mill in Oregon. Their son Frederick built a home in Yamhill, Oregon, that is now a state landmark; Frederick's son John Marion Bunn then built the first fine house there. As Cleary was growing up, her mother's admonishment "Remember your pioneer ancestors" became a familiar phrase. In her autobiography A Girl from Yamhill, Cleary described her mother as "a classic figure of the westward emigration movement, the little schoolmarm from the East who stepped off a train in the West to teach school." Mable Atlee Bunn was born in Michigan and came to Quincy, Washington, with two cousins in 1905. Two years later, she married Chester Lloyd Bunn, the son of a farmer. After their marriage, the couple moved to Yamhill, where Lloyd, as he preferred to be called, worked the family farm. In 1916 Cleary was born in the nearest hospital, in McMinnville. As she noted in her autobiography, "McMinnville was my birthplace, but home was Yamhill."

Cleary has always been involved with paper and ink. When she was about two years old, she poured a bottle of blue ink on the tablecloth at Thanksgiving and made hand prints on it; she noted in her autobiography, "I do not recall what happened when aunts, uncles, and cousins arrived. All I recall is my satisfaction in marking with ink on that white surface." As an only child on a farm, she had plenty of freedom to explore. Her father had taught Cleary about safety, and she obeyed his rules, which seemed, in her words, "sensible and interesting." The farm was, as she recalled in A Girl from Yamhill, "a source of interest and delight."

From an early age, Cleary was taught by her mother, who had an interest in books and writing, that reading had power. Mable Bunn would tell Beverly, "Reading is to the mind as exercise is to the body." In an interview in People, Cleary once explained: "My mother had this enchanted world of reading, and I wanted in." Mrs. Cleary taught her daughter scraps of literature from authors like Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles Dickens and related stories of her own Michigan girlhood as well as folk and fairy tales; she also gave her daughter a list of life rules, such as to never be afraid to stand on your own two feet. Her grandmother read to Cleary from the animal stories by Thornton W. Burgess that were published in the local newspaper, and her father read her "The Katzenjammer Kids" comic strip. Although she owned only two books, Mother Goose and The Story of the Three Bears, Cleary loved literature. Her mother organized a library in Yamhill that was located above a bank in a lodge hall, and soon crates of books began to arrive from the state library, including several that would become Cleary's particular favorites: Joseph Jacobs' More English Fairy Tales and the picture books of Beatrix Potter, most notably The Tailor of Gloucester.

When she was six years old, Cleary and her parents left the farm in Yamhill and moved to Portland. She wrote in her autobiography, "Yamhill had taught me that the world was a safe and beautiful place, where children were treated with kindness, patience, and tolerance. Everyone loved little girls. I was sure of that." Cleary enjoyed life in the city, playing with neighborhood children and taking ballet. Then, in first grade, she got chicken pox, then smallpox. "By then," she recalled, "I was hopelessly lost in reading." Her teacher divided the class into three groups—Bluebirds, Redbirds, and Black-birds—according to their reading ability; Cleary was placed in the lowest group, the Blackbirds. "From a country child who had never known fear, I became a city child consumed by fear." In second grade, Cleary's teacher helped her to improve her reading skills, but Beverly developed an aversion to reading outside of school. The family moved once again, this time to a house five blocks from Klickitat Street, a neighborhood near the city limit that Cleary would later use as the setting for many of her books. One day her mother found a case of books in the basement of the local Sunday school. One of these books was The Dutch Twins, a story by Lucy Fitch Perkins. Cleary recalled, "Suddenly, I was reading and enjoying what I read! It was a miracle. I was happy in a way I had not been happy since starting school." Then Cleary received a copy of Hugh Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle, a book she enjoyed even more than The Dutch Twins; she wrote a review of Doctor Dolittle that was published in the Oregon Journal. When her family moved again, this time to Hancock Street in Portland, Cleary played with the neighborhood children and went to the movies; she especially enjoyed Hal Roach's "Our Gang" comedies, noting, "To me, these comedies were about neighborhood children playing together, something I wanted to read about in books. I longed for books about the children of Hancock Street." In school, she continued to win kudos for her writing. The library also became a sort of refuge from family tensions. As she recalled in More Junior Authors: "As I grew up, I read almost every book in the children's collection but I could rarely find what I wanted to read most of all. That was funny stories about American boys and girls.… I wanted to read about boys and girls who lived in the same kind of neighborhood I lived in and went to a school like the one I attended."

In 1928 Lloyd Bunn finally sold the family farm, and the family moved to a house two blocks south of Klickitat Street. In sixth grade Cleary wrote a story for a writing assignment about a little girl who goes to Bookland and talks with some of her favorite literary characters. She remembered in her autobiography that a "feeling of peace came over me as I wrote far beyond the required length of the essay. I had discovered the pleasure of writing." After her teacher, Miss Smith, read the story aloud, she exclaimed, "When Beverly grows up, she should write children's books." Miss Smith's praise gave "direction to my life," Cleary maintained, adding in More Junior Authors that the suggestion "seemed like such a good idea that I made up my mind that someday I would write books—the kind of books I wanted to read."

In eighth grade Cleary had an experience that affected her writing more negatively. After she submitted a paragraph of description for a class assignment, her teacher returned Cleary's work covered in red corrections. "For years," Cleary recalled, "I avoided writing description, and children told me they liked my books 'because there isn't any description in them.'" However, in high school Cleary went back to receiving praise from her teachers for her writing. One of her stories, "The Diary of a Tree-Sitter," was called very funny by one teacher, who told the budding author, "You show talent." Another story, "The Green Christmas," which describes how a boy is saved from playing the part of a Christmas angel in a school program after he falls into water containing green dye, later became a chapter in her first book, Henry Huggins. Cleary joined the Migwam, a school literary club, and later became its president; she also studied journalism, wrote stories for the school newspaper, and wrote a script for the Girls' League Show. At home, tensions increased between Cleary and her mother, who, the author wrote in the second volume of her autobiographyMy Own Two Feet, was struggling "to mold me into the perfect daughter." Her mother's cousin, a librarian at Chaffey Junior College in Ontario, California, offered Beverly the chance to stay with her while attending the school, which was free for California residents. Although her mother disapproved of the idea, her father stepped in, and Cleary moved southwest to California.

In her freshman English class at Chaffey, Cleary wrote an autobiography about the early years of her life in Yamhill; the teacher, who did not give out good grades easily, awarded her with what she called in her autobiography "an unadorned, unqualified A." She received another A for an assignment, written in the third person, about her difficulties in learning to read in the first grade; she noted in My Own Two Feet, "Without knowing it, I had begun to write the story of my life." After finishing two happy years at Chaffey, Cleary went to the University of California at Berkeley. She had worked as a substitute librarian at the Ontario, California, public library; now she wanted to become a children's librarian and write children's books. At an assembly dance at the university she met Clarence Cleary, a student six years her senior who was studying economics and history. Clarence was Roman Catholic, while Beverly was Protestant; consequently, Mable Bunn did not approve of her daughter's relationship. At school Beverly studied English, languages, education, and the sciences in preparation for entering the School of Librarianship at the University of Washington in Seattle. In her senior year she realized that she wanted to marry Clarence Cleary; however, she intended to keep her Protestant faith. After graduating in 1938, Cleary went to the University of Washington, and received her bachelor of arts degree in librarianship the following year.

After graduating from the University of Washington, Cleary moved to Yakima, Washington, where she became a children's librarian. Of her experience there, she wrote in My Own Two Feet, "Most vividly of all I remember the group of grubby little boys, nonreaders, who came once a week during school hours.… Their teacher … said their textbooks did not interest them and perhaps library books would encourage them to read. 'Where are all the books about kids like us?,' they wanted to know. Where indeed.… As I listened to the boys talk about books, I recalled my own childhood reading, when I longed for funny stories about the sort of children who lived in my neighborhood. What was the matter with authors? I had often wondered and now wondered again."

Cleary enjoyed introducing children to books. She became a frequent storyteller, traveling to local schools and libraries and beginning a stint on her library's weekly radio broadcast. She told Shirley Fitzgibbons in Top of the News, "Although I told folk and fairy tales, I think I learned to write for children in those Saturday afternoon story hours. When I began Henry Huggins, I did not know how to write a book, so I mentally told the stories … and wrote them down as I told them. This is why my first book is a collection of stories about a group of characters rather than a novel." In 1940 Beverly married Clarence Cleary at a church in Reno, Nevada. The newlyweds moved to San Francisco, where Clarence worked for the U.S. Navy's cost inspection office before being transferred to Alameda, California. The couple soon moved to Oakland so Clarence could avoid commuting across the San Francisco Bay Bridge.

Beverly began working part-time at the Sather Gate Book Shop in Berkeley, where she sold children's books. During World War II she became a librarian—with the title of junior hostess—at Camp John T. Knight, an Army camp in Oakland, and then became post librarian at an army hospital library. At the end of the war, Cleary tried to write a book about "the maturing of a sensitive girl who wanted to write," but was uninspired. After having a miscarriage, she returned to work at the Sather Gate Book Shop; meanwhile the Clearys moved to Berkeley, where Clarence was auditing government contracts at the University of California, buying a house in which the previous owners had left a ream of typing paper. In the bookstore Cleary picked up a particularly lame easy reader and read, disgustedly. "Suddenly," she wrote in My Own Two Feet, "I knew a could write a better book and, what was more, I intended to do it as soon as the Christmas rush was over."

Creates Timeless Characters

On the second of January 1948, Cleary sat down to write. She thought of the boys who had come into the library in Yakima wanting books about youngsters like themselves. "Why not write an easy-reading book for kids like them?" She thought about Hancock Street in Portland, where she had lived when she was the same age as the boys who came into the Yakima library. Hancock was a street where "boys teased girls even though they played with them, where boys built scooters out of roller skates and apple boxes, wooden in those days, and where dogs, before the advent of leash laws, followed the children to school." She also recalled an incident from her days in the hospital library, where some children brought their dog into the library: "On their way home," Cleary recalled in her autobiography, "they learned that a dog was not allowed on a streetcar unless it was in a box." With all of this in mind, Cleary prepared to take the plunge. "In my imagination, I stood once more before Yakima's story hour crowd as I typed the first sentence: 'Henry Huggins was in the third grade.'"

The character Henry Huggins was inspired by the boys on Hancock Street, who, his creator recalled, "seemed eager to jump onto the page. Hancock Street became Klickitat Street because I had always liked the sound of the name when I had lived nearby." She named Henry's dog Spareribs, because she happened to have some spareribs in the refrigerator, and turned the streetcar into a bus. While writing her book, Cleary wrote to Siri Andrews, one of her former professors from library school who was now working as an editor and librarian in New Hampshire, to tell her about it. Andrews put Cleary in touch with an editor at Addison-Cokesbury publishers, who wrote back with interest. Cleary recalled in her autobiography, "I continued happily inventing stories about Henry from reality and imagination and, as I wrote, Mother's words, whenever I had to write a composition in high school, came back to me: 'Make it funny. People always like to read something funny,' and 'Keep it simple. The best writing is simple writing.'"

In Henry Huggins Henry is a third-grader who befriends a skinny stray dog he finds in a drug store. His mother, who cannot come to get him, suggests that Henry bring his new pet home on the bus. Lacking the requisite box in which to bring home the dog, which he names Ribsy, Henry uses a shopping bag to carry his new pet on the bus. Ribsy escapes from the shopping bag and wreaks havoc on the moving bus. The police arrive, looking for Henry; to his delight, they bring him and Ribsy home in a police car. Henry Huggins also introduces the Quimby sisters, Henry's neighbors on Klickitat Street. Henry gets along well with Beezus, whom he considers sensible, but he is irritated with Ramona, whom he considers an annoying pest.

When Cleary finished her book, she submitted it to an editor at the William Morrow publishing company, who suggested that the name of the dog be changed from Spareribs to Ribs or Ribsy because it sounded more like a name a boy would use. Henry Huggins was published by Morrow in 1950. Cleary wrote in My Own Two Feet, "After all my years of ambition to write, of aiming both consciously and unconsciously toward writing, I had actually written. I was a real live author."

Cleary has added five additional installments to the adventures of Henry Huggins: Henry and Beezus, Henry and Ribsy, Henry and the Paper Route, Henry

[Image not available for copyright reasons]

and the Clubhouse, and Ribsy. In these works, she continues the exploits of her Everyboy and his faithful mongrel. Henry tries to earn a red bicycle, tries to keep Ribsy out of trouble, takes on a paper route, builds a clubhouse, and loses—and recovers—his dog, all the while trying to outwit his nemesis, Ramona. Writing in Children and Books, May Hill Arbuthnot and Zena Sutherland dubbed the books about Henry and his friends "pure Americana," adding, "The characters are real boys and girls, convincingly alive." Margaret Novinger of Southeastern Librarian claimed that, with her "Henry Huggins" stories, Cleary "has created a world within the field of children's literature.… The world is bounded by childhood and humor and welcomes all children … to enter and enjoy."

While continuing to write her first stories about Henry Huggins and his friends, it occurred to Cleary that all the characters she had created thus far had no brothers or sisters. "Someone should have a sibling," she wrote in My Own Two Feet, "so I tossed in a little sister to explain Beezus's nickname. When it came time to name the sister, I overheard a neighbor call out to another whose name was Ramona. I wrote in 'Ramona,' made several references to her, gave her one brief scene, and thought that was the end of her. Little did I dream, to use a trite expression from books of my childhood, that she would take over books of her own, that she would grow and become a well-known and loved character."

In 1955 Cleary published Beezus and Ramona, the first of her series of books about the Quimby family. In this work, Beezus is nine years old and Ramona is four. Ramona embarrasses Beezus by scribbling all over a library book she wants to keep, by disrupting an after-school art class and a checker game

[Image not available for copyright reasons]

Beezus is playing with Henry Huggins, and by giving Beezus a hard time when she is baby-sitting. When Beezus turns ten, Ramona manages to ruin two birthday cakes. Beezus decides she does not love her sister; however, when her namesake, Aunt Beatrice, arrives, she and Mrs. Quimby laugh about the trouble they caused each other while growing up. After hearing her mother and aunt, Beezus concludes that it is okay to dislike your sister every now and then. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Buell called Ramona "the most exasperating little sister since Tarkington created Jane Baxter," while Heloise P. Mailloux, writing in Horn Book, called Beezus and Ramona "a very funny book; its situations are credible, and it has a perceptive handling of family relationships that is unfortunately rare in easily read books." Louise S. Bechtel noted in the New York Herald Tribune Book Review that Beezus and Ramona is "just as funny and real as [books] about Henry. It will bring wonderful comfort to nine-year-old girls who suffer from characterful, bright, naughty little sisters."

Parents are an integral part of the "Beezus and Ramona" series; in fact, the changes within the Quimby family are often thought to reflect those within U.S. society during the period covered by the books. In Ramona the Brave, Mrs. Quimby goes from being a full-time mother to starting a job as a part-time bookkeeper; in Ramona and Her Father, Mr. Quimby loses his job, and the family goes through economic difficulties as well as tensions created by his constant smoking; in Ramona and Her Mother, Mrs. Quimby goes to work full time so her husband can attend college; in Ramona Quimby, Age Eight, Mr. Quimby works part-time in a supermarket warehouse while attending college; and, in Ramona Forever, he hopes to begin teaching art in an elementary school after receiving his teaching credentials, but accepts a position as manager in the local supermarket instead so the family can stay in Portland. In Ramona and Her Mother Beezus and Ramona hear their parents argue, a situation that leads the children to think that they are going to get a divorce. However, Mr. and Mrs. Quimby assure their daughters that they are just sometimes short-tempered and are far from perfect. Reviewers have noted that Mr. and Mrs. Quimby are loving and supportive parents and that they are always there for their children. As Anita Trout said in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "An important message which Cleary makes through Ramona is how very real are the fears which children have about their parents and family situations.… Cleary knows that children need to hear [that problems don't change the love parents have for them] often."

After publishing Ramona Forever in 1984, Cleary allowed fifteen years to pass before she revived the "Ramona" series with Ramona's World, which finds the plucky child in fourth grade. In this tale Ramona gamely endeavors to win a best friend while tolerating the arrival of a baby into her family. During the course of the book, Ramona attempts to vacuum a cat. And while playing in a friend's attic, she manages to plunge through the thin ceiling and hang suspended over a dining area. A Publishers Weekly critic reported that "most of Ramona's triumphs and traumas are timeless and convincingly portrayed." A Booklist reviewer, meanwhile, concluded that "for the most part, this is just what readers have been waiting for: vintage Ramona."

Writes for Young Adults

In addition to her books about Henry, Ribsy, and the Quimby sisters, Cleary has written popular novels for young adults, Fifteen, The Luckiest Girl, Jean and Johnny, and Sister of the Bride. Anita Trout, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, stated that, "Viewed beside the more aggressive problem novels which abound today, Cleary's teenage stories seem quite tame. But in the context of the years in which they were written, they fare better. All are told from the points of view of young girls, fifteen to seventeen years old, who are just beginning to explore the changes they feel emerging in their relationships with their families and, more important, with boys. Cleary states that she wrote Fifteen (1956) in response to requests from junior-high girls who wanted books about people they could recognize."

Cleary's characters often have conflicts with parents who generally mean well. "Cleary has surrounded her teen heroines with sympathetic and supportive parents whose constant care is one of the things they, like all teenagers, are fighting," according to Trout. "Even if a character is not confronted with a large problem such as divorce, abuse, or alcoholism, she will have a tendency to make things harder than they are by constantly analyzing and second-guessing her reactions."

The adolescent tendency to over-analyze one's every action is the subject of The Luckiest Girl, in which Shelley Latham, an only child, "moves from Oregon to California for a year to live with the family of her mother's college roommate. Her parents feel she needs to try her wings before she goes off to college and that this will be a good experience for her," Trout explained. "She meets a handsome boy the first day in her new school and continually replays every word they exchange, searching for the meaning of every nuance. Does Phil really mean to joke when he calls her 'webfoot' because she comes from perennially wet Oregon, or does he dislike her?" Similarly, in the novel Jean and Johnny, the character Jean Jarrett "goes through the same process after she accidentally meets tall, good-looking Johnny Chessler at a dance," Trout recounted. "The next day she spends hours wondering why he asked her to dance, what he thought of her when he discovered she could not dance, and what he thinks of her now. These situations underline the basic insecurity of teenagers—they are caught between two worlds, childhood and adulthood, and are striving for a sign that they have left behind the former and safely reached the latter. Part of the growth process for all of them is the realization that there is no clear demarcation and that all growth is gradual and continuous."

Trout concluded: "Much of what forms the backgrounds of Cleary's teen novels seems dated today. Perhaps most obvious are the stereotypical mothers whose primary concerns are with the popularity of their daughters and the upkeep of their homes. Another point is the sameness of the endings of the books. Almost uniformly the handsome boy turns out to have no character or intelligence, and the heroine discovers that the unassuming boy who has been her real friend all along is the right person for her. In spite of these problems, the books are still accurate portrayals of young women discovering themselves and young men. Cleary's warmth and sensitivity are probably prime reasons why the books continue in print."

Writes a Newbery Medal Winner

In 1983 Cleary produced Dear Mr. Henshaw, a work often cited as one of her strongest works as well as a departure in form. Geared for middle-grade readers and structured through letters and diary entries, the novel features Leigh Botts, a sixth-grade boy of divorced parents who is living in a new town in California. Leigh has been writing to author Boyd Henshaw since second grade. Henshaw has included a response to Leigh's last letter with a list of questions for him, so Leigh outlines his situation: he misses his father, a cross-country trucker who has his own rig but is somewhat irresponsible, and his dog Bandit, who accompanies Mr. Botts on his runs; he is often alone while his mother studies to be a nurse and works part-time for a caterer; at school, his lunch box is being burgled; and he has made no new friends. Henshaw suggests that Leigh keep a diary, which he does. Leigh is upset when his father tells him Bandit was lost in a snowstorm; while talking to his father on the phone, Leigh hears a boy's voice telling Mr. Botts that he and his mother are ready to go out for pizza. Leigh confides his feelings to his mother, who consoles him and explains the cause of the divorce. In school, Leigh rigs a burglar alarm for his lunch box. He is praised for his work, and several of his classmates ask him to help them build alarms for their lunch boxes. He makes a new friend, Barry, wins an honorable mention in a story contest, and meets the famous author Angela Badger, who tells him he is a writer. At the conclusion of the novel, Leigh's father, who has rescued Bandit, comes to the house to leave the dog with Leigh. However, Leigh decides to let his dad keep Bandit as company on his long trucking runs.

Reviewing Dear Mr. Henshaw in the Washington Post Book World, Colby Rodowsky stated that "Epistolary novels, by their very nature, are apt to limit a writer, but Beverly Cleary … has peopled her story with a group of fully realized characters.… The letters themselves are so real they make your teeth ache." Natalie Babbitt, writing in the New York Times Book Review, wrote that Cleary "has written many very good books over the years. This one is the best. It is a first-rate, poignant story in the forms of letters and a diary—a new construction for a Cleary book—and there is so much in it, all presented so simply, that it's hard to find a way to do it justice." In 1984 Cleary received the Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw.

Cleary published Strider, a sequel to Dear Mr. Henshaw, in 1991. Leigh, now an eighth-grader, begins his diary again. Leigh and Barry find an abandoned puppy on the beach that they name Strider, and the two boys agree to share Strider in a joint custody arrangement. However, Leigh and the dog form a special attachment to each other. Leigh's mother, who is now going to school to become a registered nurse, explains that Strider is a Queensland Heeler, an Australian herding dog. Leigh's father, still out on the road, continues to forget to call Leigh and to send child support payments, but Leigh is now better able to deal with his father's failings. When Barry goes on vacation for a month Leigh takes care of Strider, and the two grow even closer, which causes a rift with Barry when he returns. After Leigh returns the dog to Barry, Strider escapes and returns to Leigh; finally, Barry decides to give Strider to his friend. At the conclusion of the novel, Leigh makes friends with Kevin, another boy from a divorced family, and with Geneva, a girl whom he admires. He also joins the school track team and wins the Rotary Invitational Track Meet. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly commented that, "Although it lacks the emotional intensity that made [Dear Mr. Henshaw] an instant classic, this sequel offers further proof of the author's preeminence in children's fiction.… Once again Cleary demonstrates her ability to write from the heart." Mary M. Burns added in Horn Book that, "Once again, Cleary proves that she is in complete harmony with the world view of children and adolescents."

Cleary has often included autobiographical elements in her works, and Emily's Runaway Imagination, a book set in Oregon in the 1920s, is considered one of her most autobiographical novels. In this story, Emily Bartlett lives in Pitchfork, Oregon, a thinly disguised version of Yamhill. Emily loves to read, but there are few books in Pitchfork, which does not have a library. Emily's mother requests that a library be built in the town, and the state librarians agree; consequently, Mrs. Bartlett begins preparations. Emily has a series of adventures: when she feeds fallen apples to the family hogs, they become drunk on fermented apple juice and lurch around the yard during her mother's elegant luncheon; she bleaches the family's plow horse to turn it into a snow-white steed; and she inadvertently wins second prize in a contest by dressing in a "costume" of an outgrown dress and her mother's high heels. At the end of the story, Emily is happy when her Chinese next-door neighbor, who is returning to China, presents his home to Mrs. Bartlett so that it can be used to house the new library. Writing in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Zena Sutherland called Emily's Runaway Imagination "a truly delightful book" as well as a "pleasant story for girls, written in the artfully artless style that marks true craftsmanship." Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Ellen Lewis Buell added, "Friendly but shy, bumbling but sentient," Emily "is a child other little girls will be glad to know." A reviewer in Publishers Weekly dubbed Emily "one of Miss Cleary's most charming characters."

Memoirs Tell Her Story

Cleary released the autobiographies A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet in 1988 and 1995 respectively. Both books are directed to middle and upper-grade readers. The first volume describes the author's life from birth until she left for junior college in California; the second volume takes her from college to the publication of her first book. Recounting Cleary's childhood in Portland, Oregon, during the Great Depression, A Girl from Yamhill reveals the real Klickitat Street and shows that the roots of many of the fictional episodes featuring Ramona Quimby were based on Cleary's own life. Praising Cleary's choice of topics—which include the emotional difficulties in moving to a new town, dealing with an overly demonstrative male relative, relating to a withdrawn mother whose affection takes the form of molding her children to her own designs, and coping with the pangs of adolescent first love—Lillian N. Gerhardt wrote in School Library Journal that, "as with her fiction, readers are likely to want her memoir to go on when they read her last page." Reviewing A Girl from Yamhill in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Zena Sutherland noted that Cleary "sees her child self with the same clarity and objectivity as she has seen her fictional characters," while Judith A. Sheriff added in the Voice of Youth Advocates that the author's "memoir is every bit as delightful to read as her stories." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that while A Girl from Yamhill "is a slow, sometimes oblique story at the outset," it is "deeply moving by the end" and serves as "a real gift to Cleary's many fans, young and old."

My Own Two Feet takes up the story where its predecessor left off, with the future author on a Greyhound bus bound from Oregon to California, ready to begin her life as a college student and an independent adult. My Own Two Feet "is a Depression story and then a World War II home-front story," explained Perri Klass in the New York Times Book Review, "but most remarkably it is a story about craving independence and craving education." From college, where she studied library science, Cleary obtains a job as a children's librarian in Washington. The children she meets there inspire her early attempts at fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a writer of books for young readers. In between attending college and publishing her first book in 1950, she experiences courtship and marriage, the financial stresses caused by making a living during the Depression years, and an emotional confrontation with a strong-willed, controlling mother. Cleary's "vivid recollections" of the many small events that figured in her journey as a student and young wife "are continued evidence of this author's ability to convince readers," maintained Ruth K. MacDonald in School Library Journal. "It's all in the details."

In assessing her motivation as a author, Cleary once noted in Twentieth-Century Children's Writers: "The stories I write are the stories I wanted to read as a child, and the experience I hope to share with children is the discovery that reading is one of the pleasures of life and not just something one must do in school." "The writer for children must fuse memory and observation and go back into childhood as he writes," she also wrote in the Oklahoma Librarian. "He must be the child he is writing about." As she noted in Horn Book, as she wrote her stories, "I discovered I had a collaborator, the child within myself—a rather odd, serious little girl, prone to colds, who sat in a child's rocking chair with her feet over the hot air outlet of the furnace, reading for hours, seeking laughter in the pages of books while her mother warned her she would ruin her eyes. That little girl, who has remained with me, prevents me from writing down to children, from poking fun at my characters, and from writing an adult reminiscence about childhood instead of a book to be enjoyed by children. And yet I do not write solely for that child; I am also writing my adult self. We are collaborators who must agree."

In My Own Two Feet, Cleary recalls her beginnings as a writer. When walking to the bank to deposit her advance royalty check for Henry Huggins, she found a nickel under a leaf. "I was confident that a satisfying life of writing lay ahead, that ideas would continue to flow. As I walked, I thought about all the bits of knowledge about children, reading, and writing that had clung to me like burrs or dandelion fluff all through childhood, college, the Yakima children's room, and the bookstore. As I mulled over my past, I made two resolutions: I would ignore all trends, and I would not let money influence any decisions I would make about my books." At the bank, she deposited her check and the worn nickel, as she wrote, "for luck." She concluded, "In my years of writing, I have often thought of that nickel and now see it as a talisman of all the good fortune that has come to me: friends, readers, awards, travel, children of my own, financial security that has allowed me to return the generosity extended to me when times were hard for everyone. It was indeed a lucky nickel."

If you enjoy the works of Beverly Cleary

you may also want to check out the following books:

Lois Lowry, Anastasia Krupnik, 1979.

Johanna Hurwitz, The Adventures of Ali Baba Bernstein, 1985.

Betsy Byars, Bingo Brown's Guide to Romance, 1992.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Arbuthnot, May Hill, and Zena Sutherland, Children and Books, 4th edition, Scott, Foresman, 1972, pp. 442-443.

Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults, Volume 1, Beacham Publishing (Osprey, FL), 1990.

Berg, Julie, Beverly Cleary: The Young at Heart, Abdo and Daughters (Minneapolis, MN), 1993.

Beverly Cleary Resource Book, American School Publishers, 1988.

Children's Literature Review, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 2, 1976, Volume 8, 1985.

Cleary, Beverly, A Girl from Yamhill, Morrow (New York, NY), 1988.

Cleary, Beverly, My Own Two Feet, Morrow (New York, NY), 1995.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 52: American Writers for Children since 1950, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1986.

Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

Kelly, Joanne, The Beverly Cleary Handbook, Teacher Ideas Press (Englewood, CO), 1996.

More Junior Authors, edited by Muriel Fuller, H. W. Wilson (New York, NY), 1963, pp. 49-50.

Rees, David, The Marble in the Water: Essays on Contemporary Writers of Fiction for Children and Young Adults, Horn Book (Boston, MA), 1980, pp. 90-103.

St. James Guide to Children's Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Scott, Elaine, Beverly Cleary's Ramona: Behind the Scenes of a Television Show, Dell (New York, NY), 1988.

Signal Review 1: A Selective Guide to Children's Literature, 1982, edited by Nancy Chambers, Thimble Press, 1983, p. 40.

Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 1953, review of Otis Spofford, p. 18; September 1, 1984, Ilene Cooper, review of Ramona Forever, pp. 62-63; August, 1995, Ilene Cooper, review of My Own Two Feet, p. 1948; April 1, 1998, p. 1330; April 15, 1998, p. 1460; June 1, 1999, Ilene Cooper, review of Ramona's World, p. 1824; September 15, 1999, review of Girl from Yamhill, p. 254; April 15, 2000, p. 1561; September 1, 2000, p. 142; March 15, 2004, Stephanie Zvirin, "Cleary Honored," p. 1305.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, November, 1961, Zena Sutherland, review of Emily's Runaway Imagination, p. 40.

Children's Literature in Education, March, 1999, pp. 9-29.

Christian Science Monitor, September 6, 1951, Ethel C. Ince, review of Ellen Tebbits, p. 13.

Creative Classroom, November-December, 1994, p. 74.

Growing Point, January, 1983, Margery Fisher, review of Ralph S. Mouse, pp. 4007-4008.

Horn Book, October, 1955, Heloise P. Mailloux, review of Beezus and Ramona, p. 364; June, 1967, Ethel L. Heins, review of Mitch and Amy, p. 346; June, 1975, Ethel L. Heins, review of Ramona the Brave, p. 266; August, 1975, Caroline Feller Bauer, "Laura Ingalls Wilder Award Presentation Speech," pp. 359-360; December, 1977, Mary M. Burns, review of Ramona and Her Father, p. 660; October, 1982, Beverly Cleary, "The Laughter of Children"; August, 1984, Beverly Cleary, "Newbery Medal Acceptance"; September-October, 1991, Mary M. Burns, review of Strider, p. 595; May-June, 1995, Barbara Chatton, "Ramona and Her Neighbors: Why We Love Them," p. 297; November-December, 1995, Mary M. Burns, review of My Own Two Feet, p. 75; September-October, 1999, Robert Strang, review of Ramona's World, p. 607; March-April, 2004, "National Medal of Arts," p. 221.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1950, review of Henry Huggins, p. 386; July 1, 1951, review of Ellen Tebbits, p. 319.

New York Herald Tribune Book Review, November 6, 1953, Louise S. Bechtel, review of Beezus and Ramona, p. 8; December 5, 1965, Margaret Sherwood Libby, "Young Man's Fantasy," p. 50.

New York Times Book Review, October 22, 1950, Ellen Lewis Buell, review of Henry Huggins, p. 42; October 4, 1953, Ellen Lewis Buell, "The Cut-Up," p. 28; September 25, 1955, Ellen Lewis Buell, review of Beezus and Ramona, p. 34; September 22, 1957, Ellen Lewis Buell, review of Henry and the Paper Route, p. 36; November 26, 1961, Ellen Lewis Buell, review of Emily's Runaway Imagination, p. 50; October 23, 1983, Natalie Babbitt, review of Dear Mr. Henshaw, p. 34; November 12, 1995, p. 40.

Oklahoma Librarian, July, 1971, Beverly Cleary, "How Long Does It Take to Write a Book?," pp. 14-17, 28.

People, October 3, 1988, "After Forty Years, Kid-Lit Queen Beverly Cleary's Gentle Tales Are Turning up on Television," p. 59.

Publishers Weekly, August 4, 1951, review of Ellen Tebbits, pp. 484-485; August 15, 1953, review of Otis Spofford, p. 647; September 11, 1961, review of Emily's Runaway Imagination, p. 62; June 7, 1991, review of Strider, p. 66; July 31, 1995, review of My Own Two Feet, p. 82; September 16, 1996, "Beverly Cleary: On Common Sense," p. 29; February 16, 1998, p. 210; June 7, 1999, review of Ramona's World, p. 83; November 22, 1999, Heather Vogel Frederick, "Beverly Cleary," p. 21; January 10, 2000, p. 24; May 14, 2001, p. 40.

Saturday Review, November 11, 1950, Mary Gould Davis, review of Henry Huggins, p. 48; March 18, 1967, Zena Sutherland, review of Mitch and Amy, p. 36.

School Library Journal, July, 1998, pp. 71-72; August, 1999, p. 131; January, 2000, pp. 73-74; December, 2003, "Beverly Cleary Wins National Medal of Art," p. 25.

Southeastern Librarian, fall, 1968, Margaret Novinger, "Beverly Cleary: A Favorite Author of Children," pp. 194-202.

Top of the News, December, 1957, Beverly Cleary, "Writing Books about Henry Huggins"; winter, 1977, Shirley Fitzgibbons, "A National Heroine and an International Favorite."

Washington Post Book World, October 9, 1977, Katherine Paterson, "Ramona Redux," p. E6; August 14, 1983, Colby Rodowsky, "Life through the Letter Box," p. 7; September 9, 1984, Michael Dirda, review of Ramona Forever, p. 11.

Young Readers Review, November, 1965, Phyllis Cohen, review of The Mouse and the Motorcycle, pp. 7-8.