Beverly Cleary (1916 to 2021) was an American children’s author whose characters include Ramona Quimby and her sister Beezus, Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, and Ralph S. Mouse. Her books have sold 91 million copies since the first was published in 1950.
She was born Beverly Bunn in McMinnville, Oregon, and spent her early childhood on a farm in Yamhill before the family moved to Portland when she was six. She struggled with reading in her first years at school. After Chaffey Junior College in California she took a degree in English at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1938, and a second degree in library science at the University of Washington in 1939. She worked as a children’s librarian in Yakima, Washington, married Clarence Cleary in 1940, and was post librarian at an Army hospital in Oakland from 1942 to 1945.
As a librarian she met children who could not find books about people like themselves, and that prompted her to write. “Henry Huggins” (1950), published by Morrow, was the first of six chapter books about Henry, Ribsy and their neighbours on Klickitat Street in Portland. Most of her stories are set in the Grant Park neighbourhood of north-east Portland where she grew up. Henry’s friend Beezus and her little sister took centre stage in “Beezus and Ramona” (1955), and the Ramona series ran to eight novels, ending with “Ramona’s World” in 1999.
“The Mouse and the Motorcycle” (1965) began a trilogy about Ralph, a house mouse in a run-down hotel who rides a miniature motorcycle. “Dear Mr. Henshaw” (1983), a novel told in letters, won the 1984 Newbery Medal and was followed by a sequel, “Strider” (1991). Cleary also wrote novels for teenagers, among them “Fifteen” (1956), and two memoirs, “A Girl from Yamhill” (1988) and “My Own Two Feet” (1995).
Her honours include the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (1975), the 1981 National Book Award for “Ramona and Her Mother”, Newbery Honors for “Ramona and Her Father” and “Ramona Quimby, Age 8”, and the National Medal of Arts (2003). The Ramona books were adapted as a Canadian television series in 1988, starring Sarah Polley, and as the 2010 film “Ramona and Beezus” with Joey King and Selena Gomez. Cleary died in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, on 25 March 2021, aged 104.
