Asked for her secret to longevity once, Cleary, who was born Beverly Atlee Bunn, previously toldABC News, “I didn’t do it on purpose!” even adding that she didn’t think she looked a day over 80.
Beverly Cleary receives a National Medal of Arts in 2003.TIM SLOAN/Getty Images
Born in McMinnville, Oregon, in April 1916, her family moved to a small town that didn’t have a library. Cleary, who nearly failed first grade, struggled with reading and didn’t embrace books until they moved to Portland, Oregon,according to her website.
During the Depression, she attended Chaffey Junior College in Ontario, California, before attending the University of California, Berkeley, where she met her sweetheart Clarence Cleary.
The two married in 1940, and had two children, twins Malcolm and Marianne, who inspired her book,Mitch and Amy. Beverly and Clarence were together until his death in 2004.
In her biography page, Cleary, who went on to become a children’s librarian, writes that she eventually realized she wanted to write stories that 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.”
Cleary published her first book,Henry Huggins, in 1950 after realizing that boys needed more books with characters they identified with. “In those days it was very hard to find books for little boys. There were animal stories, of course, but there weren’t any books about what these boys called ‘kids like us,’ " shetold PEOPLEin 1988.
ActressesSelena Gomezand Joey King even went on to play her two most famous characters in the 2010 movieBeezus and Ramona.
Terry Smith/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty
Cleary’s last book,Ramona’s World, was published in 1999, but her books continue to sell worldwide and have been translated into 14 languages, according to herwebsite.
And since 2006, her birthday, April 12, has been celebrated as a holiday calledNational D.E.A.R. Day (Drop Everything and Read)in honor of her accomplishments as a children’s author.
In 2010, Cleary spoke with PEOPLE and explained that all but one of her 32 books were written in longhand and she never had a single rejected manuscript. Of her dozens of famous characters, Cleary most identifies with well-mannered Ellen Tebbits.
“But inside, I had Ramona-like thoughts,” she said.
Among her many accolades, Cleary won a National Book Award, a Newbery Medal, a National Medal of Art from the National Endowment of the Arts and in 2000, the Library of Congress gave her a Living Legend Award.
source: people.com
