11/25/2025
A boy asked her: "Where are the books about kids like us?" She couldn't answer. So she spent 50 years writing them—and changed childhood forever.
Beverly Cleary stood behind the circulation desk at the Yakima Public Library in the early 1940s when a grubby little boy leaned across the counter and faced her almost ferociously.
"Where are the books about kids like us?" he demanded.
Beverly was a trained children's librarian. She knew every shelf in that building. She knew the classics, the award winners, the books adults praised and teachers recommended.
But she had no answer for him.
Because the truth was simple and devastating: there were no books about kids like him. No books about ordinary children with ordinary concerns—skinned knees, lost dogs, sibling rivalry, the mystery of understanding adults. No books where kids felt real instead of like tiny moral lessons wrapped in polite behavior.
Beverly remembered her own childhood in Portland, Oregon. She remembered struggling to learn to read, stuck in the "low reading circle" while other kids advanced. She remembered finally conquering reading in third grade, then spending years searching library shelves for something—anything—that felt like her life.
She found children who solved mysteries or lived in magical lands or learned tidy lessons about kindness. But she never found children who were messy, stubborn, confused, and gloriously imperfect. She never found children who were just trying to figure out how the world worked.
Standing at that library desk, listening to a boy ask for something that didn't exist, Beverly made a decision.
She would write those books herself.
But it took a decade. Wanting to write wasn't the same as having something to write. Beverly married Clarence Cleary in 1940. They moved to California. She worked in a bookstore. She thought about writing but didn't know where to start.
Then one day in 1948, she found a ream of unused typing paper in the linen closet of their small Berkeley house.
She took it as a sign.
Beverly sat down and wrote about a boy named Henry Huggins—an ordinary third-grader whose hair looked like a scrubbing brush, who took in a stray dog, who had the kinds of adventures that happened on real streets to real kids.
"Henry Huggins" was published in 1950. Beverly Cleary was 34 years old.
The book was a hit. Not because it taught profound lessons or featured exceptional children. But because it felt true.
Beverly kept writing. She created Ellen Tebbits. Otis Spofford. Beezus Quimby. And then, in 1955, she introduced a character who would become more famous than any of them.
Ramona Quimby.
Ramona was six years old. She was curious and stubborn and dramatic. She named her doll Chevrolet because she thought it was a beautiful word. She squeezed an entire tube of toothpaste into the sink just to see what would happen. She cried when she was hurt and raged when she felt misunderstood.
From anyone else's perspective, Ramona could be a pest. A handful. A problem.
But Beverly wrote from Ramona's perspective. And from that angle, every single thing Ramona did made perfect sense.
This was 1955. The year Disneyland opened. The year Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. America was changing, but children's literature wasn't.
Books for kids were still primarily about instruction. Girls were supposed to be helpers, side characters, miniature adults modeling politeness. Boys could have adventures, but even they were expected to learn clear moral lessons.
Beverly rejected all of it.
She wrote Ramona as a full human being—messy, emotional, imperfect, and absolutely worthy of attention. She didn't ask Ramona to shrink or behave for the comfort of adults. She let Ramona feel everything fully: joy, anger, confusion, love, fear, embarrassment.
She showed girls that they didn't have to be perfect to deserve their own stories.
In "Ramona and Her Father," Ramona's dad loses his job. The family struggles with money. Her parents argue with a bitterness that makes readers wince. These were real problems in real families—but children's books didn't talk about them.
Beverly did.
In "Dear Mr. Henshaw," she wrote about divorce. Two different boys from different parts of the country had asked her to write about kids whose parents were separated. So she did, with honesty and compassion, showing a lonely boy navigating a fractured family.
When her own son didn't show much interest in reading, she wrote "The Mouse and the Motorcycle"—a fantasy adventure designed specifically to hook one reluctant reader. It worked. And it became a beloved series.
Beverly wrote until she was 83 years old. Over 40 books. More than 91 million copies sold worldwide. Translated into nearly 30 languages.
She won the Newbery Medal. The National Book Award. The National Medal of Arts. She was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.
But the awards that mattered most to Beverly were the 35+ state awards voted on directly by children—young readers choosing their favorite books, choosing her books, over and over again.
Because that's who she wrote for. Not for adults. Not for awards committees. For the grubby little boy at the library counter. For the girl stuck in the low reading circle. For every child who needed to see themselves in a story and feel understood instead of judged.
Beverly Cleary died on March 25, 2021, four days before her 105th birthday.
By then, generations of children had grown up with Ramona. They'd watched her mess up and keep trying. They'd seen their own feelings reflected in her struggles. They'd learned that imperfection wasn't something to fix—it was just part of being human.
Judy Blume, another icon of children's literature, called Beverly her inspiration: "You were my inspiration when I started to write all those years ago. You remain my inspiration today."
Amy Poehler, Kate DiCamillo, and countless other writers grew up reading Beverly's books and learning that children's inner lives deserved respect.
In Portland, Oregon, there's a sculpture garden with bronze statues of Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby, and Ribsy the dog. Children climb on them, take photos with them, see their beloved characters standing solid and real.
But Beverly's real legacy lives in something less tangible and more profound.
It lives in every child who picks up one of her books and feels seen. Who reads about Ramona squeezing out toothpaste or getting her hair stuck in paint and thinks: "That's exactly what I would do."
It lives in the understanding that children don't need to be perfect to deserve stories. That girlhood isn't a phase to correct but a world worth honoring. That feelings—big, messy, complicated feelings—are valid and real and important.
Beverly Cleary didn't write to shape perfect girls. She wrote to remind them they were already enough.
She was 34 when a boy asked her where the books about kids like him were. She couldn't answer.
So she spent the next 50 years writing them. She created Ramona Quimby—stubborn, emotional, imperfect, gloriously real.
She rejected the idea that children's books should teach tidy lessons. She believed kids deserved to see themselves as they actually were.
91 million copies sold. Generations of children who finally felt understood. A cultural shift in how we write about childhood.
All because one librarian heard a question she couldn't answer—and refused to accept that books about "kids like us" didn't exist.
She made them exist. And childhood was never the same.
