Danielsaurus

A Talk With the Author Who Created Ramona Quimby

Beverly Cleary, the now 95-year-old author of the Ramona Quimby books, on why her stories have continued to remain popular with children over the years:

I think it is because I have stayed true to my own memories of childhood, which are not different in many ways from those of children today. Although their circumstances have changed, I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed.

The whole conversation between Cleary and The Atlantic’s Benjamin Schwarz makes for quite a nice read. I think what always sticks with me, though, when I read about the lives of the few true legends in the children’s book world – like Cleary, and like Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Arnold Lobel, and others who were inspired and nurtured by the great Ursula Nordstrom – is how honest and connected they were with their own childhood. They didn’t write and illustrate for children out of pretense or agenda; they just wrote to remember, and to honor their own childhoods. They worked at time when books for children were regarded as illegitimate, throwaway materials – and most were either simple penny novels to preoccupy, or pedantic ‘Dick and Jane’ readers to educate. But Cleary, and those like her, did something different. They didn’t try to trick or outsmart or educate their child readers; they just put their own memories on the page, and trusted that children would find the truth in it.

I rather like that. Don’t you?