I read soooo many of her books as a kid; Ramona, Beezus, Henry Huggins (and Ribsy!), and so on. Those were a massive influence on me. RIP, what a great author for kids. There was a phase where I read a lot of books by her and Judy Blume (who is still with us).
And my other fave, Sister of the Bride.
I read the Henry Huggins books as a kid, and I read all the Ramona books to my girls multiple times. Cleary was able to get in Ramona’s head and show how all her antics made perfect sense to her. That’s a rare talent.
The first time I went to Portland I made it my business to visit Klickitat Street before going to the airport.
Or it’s biographical.
I think the most autobiographical/biographical of her books is Mitch and Amy, and in that book, the Cleary character is the mother, who to be honest is slightly naive, in a way that the child reader can pick up-- in other words, some of her attempts to use psychology on her kids are transparent. The book is also very obviously written about children living in the late 1960s, or perhaps very early 70s. (I’m guessing, but just went to look, and yup, was first published in 1967.) So actually, Cleary was 50 when the book came out. My maternal grandmother was born the same year as Cleary, and I was born in 1967.
But at any rate, Cleary herself had boy/girl twins.
It’s probably significant that Mitch and Amy is a standalone book, not part of a collection of books about a group of kids. It’s also not set in Portland.
I loved all her books because the children’s inner dialogues were so spot-on. Here was finally, at last, an adult who did not have that amnesia for childhood emotionality that every other adult seemed to go through.
In fact, it was after reading one of her books, and thinking about this very thing, this idea that adults could not remember what being a child felt like, that moved me to write down what it felt like to be a child.
I was 11, and I made a list of 27 thoughts that were very important to me, and that I thought were things that adults never understood-- several of them were stupid things adults always said. The list had a preamble to myself never to forget these things, and never to be tempted to cross anything out, because that must mean that I was becoming an adult.
Over the next five years, I added seven items, but I never crossed out anything.
I still have this list.
I can’t remember which exact book it was that prompted me to make the list, but I know it was one of Cleary’s.
I read only one of her books, ‘Fifteen’, in my teens, and I thought it was utterly charming. (I got it out of the library, and the inside covers were all scribbled with words of praise - ‘good book!’ and ‘I luv this book’. ). I don’t know why I never read any other of her books, but I was more into reading the classics by then.
When I was in grade school, all of us girls read the Beezus and Ramona books over and over. Most kid’s books have characters that are either perfect little angels or totally rotten little assholes and they live in some perfect world. Ramona had working parents who fought sometimes. Ramona fought with Beezus and Howie and had trouble in school and did silly stuff that got her in trouble. She was REAL, man!
I read all of her Henry Huggins books that were in my school library, and most of the Ramona books as well. I had no idea until now that she lived right across the river from me - I grew up in Vancouver, WA.
That’s so interesting; have you looked at this list as an adult? Did it seem foreign to you reading it as an adult or could you remember/relate to those thoughts and ideas.
I’d really be interested in what was on the list if you don’t mind sharing.
Topic:
I loved Beverly Clearly and read all of her books multiple times. There’s a student housing dorm named after her at UC Berkeley that I walk past all the time and it always makes me smile to see her name on the building.
I still have it and read it all the time.
I have all my diaries and journals from when I was a kid. I haven’t looked at them recently, but I did read through them all as an adult.
Once, I decided to watch all of our home videos from when I was growing up, I probably got through about 15 mins before I quit. It just reminded me of how hard growing up is; I had a very happy childhood, but growing up isn’t easy.
To honor Cleary’s passing, I think the CW needs to launch a new series featuring a radical, grimdark reinterpretation of her work. Ramona and Beezus are, uh, professional monster killers. You’d probably want to age them up a bit so they can have romantic entanglements. Henry Huggins is a wizard who is sometimes their ally and sometimes tricks them for his own purposes. Ribsy is a drooling hellhound. I mean, given that Supernatural finally bit the dust, there’s definitely room for such a series on the schedule, with the fact that it’s gender-flipped a delightful bonus.