The beloved author Beverly Cleary turns 100 on April 12th this year. She plans on cutting into her favorite type of birthday cake--carrot--and schooling the rest of us on life, in a Ramona-like squirt-your-entire-tube-of-toothpaste-down-the-sink sort of way. Ramona, and all of Cleary’s characters’, embody the empathic and creative outlooks that young children possess when faced with difficult circumstances. The way a child deals with a tough situation--natural disaster, family or friend problems, even world issues--is different from how adults and adolescents cope.  Cleary has been a master of capturing this vulnerability. 

Cleary has recently received a burst of attention after mentions in the introductions to Amy Poehler’s and Judy Blume’s books. Children are once again being introduced to the misbehaving, oatmeal-hating Ramona Quimby to commemorate the almost-centennial’s work.  Cleary is known for racking up the Newberry awards, the honor given to the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

When looking back at her life, it is easy to see where the inspiration for some of her characters--especially Ramona--came from. Cleary was raised on a farm, and failed first grade (remember Ramona failed kindergarten!) as a result of the culture shock she suffered when she moved from rural Oregon to Portland as a child.  She could not read on her own until the third grade, but it was more of a self-motivation thing.  She figured out she loved reading and writing when she was exposed to book characters she could relate to.

“I was looking through The Dutch Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins and I discovered I was reading – and enjoyed it,” Beverly Cleary

Cleary’s previous academic struggles never deterred her from becoming a writer. She attended the United of Washington and Berkeley University while working jobs as a seamstress and a chambermaid. But her lack of income from writing, combined with her mother’s pressure, motivated her to become a librarian, what Cleary called- “the next best thing.”

So how did Cleary create 30+ masterful children’s books? 

Some of the best fiction writing is loosely based on real life events. Cleary’s Ramona and the rest of the characters  (who will forever like on Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon, which is an actual street), were results of a person, or a combination of people, that had captivated Cleary in her youth.

Ramona was, of course, Cleary’s favorite character, but Ramona’s creation was an accident. Ramona and her sister, Beezus (because what 8 year old can properly pronounce the name, Beatrice?),  were initially secondary characters in Cleary’s first book about the rambunctious little boy, Henry Huggins.

Cleary needed Henry to have a friend who had a sibling. So while debating the names of whom Beezus’ sister would be she heard the name “Ramona” being called out by a neighbor, and the name stuck. The actual personification of Ramona, pest and all, came out of one of Cleary’s childhood memories of a girl eating an entire stick of butter outside of a grocery store.

Cleary shares some traits with Ramona, especially being stuck in her ways--the 99 year old does not have a computer and still insists on writing letters--but she says that she was always more of the well-mannered, nervous Ellen Tebbits, but with Ramona-like thoughts.

The vulnerability of children seeing and/or experiencing family crisis:

Cleary’s neighborhood troupe were roughly all between the ages of 6 to 11, a time when children become increasingly more aware of the world around them. Children at this age are able to cognitively understand the implications of natural crises, like a fire or an earthquake, but human made crises, such as a parent losing a job or a parent suffering from a mental illness, are not fully understood. When children handle situations like these, they may experience unrelated, imaginary fears and have difficulty concentrating in everyday life activities, like school.

However, in some cases the child gains added resiliency in their search to cope with and take ownership of the situation.

Cleary’s writing best exemplifies this in her story, Ramona and her Father. In the story Cleary depicts how Ramona handles her father losing his job, an event directly related to Cleary’s childhood during America’s great economic depression. While Ramona is unable to fully comprehend the root of her father’s depression, she racks her brain to find a way to improve her father’s life. She takes on getting her father to quit smoking, using the logic that the money he could use to buy their cat better food is instead being used to buy cigarettes. Ramona’s all-out campaign includes paper signs that show the dangers of smoking.

In 2008, the world experienced one of its worst economic crises since the Great Depression. Many families experienced financial and family instability. 

When Ramona and her father written in 1977, it had as much connection with its audience then as it did when children were reading it in 2008. Cleary’s characters are beloved because they are approachable, believable and incredibly empathetic.

Cleary has created the youngest of global citizens in Ramona. Ramona is the every child, a replica of the next up-and-coming global citizen. She embodies the the perspective of a child--empathetic, naïve, and intrepid, always eager to find what the world has to offer.

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Beverly Cleary turns 100: why her stories resonate then and now

By Katherine Curtiss