Many of us grew up reading Beverly Cleary‘s novels, which include the Beezus and Ramona series. Cleary turns 95 tomorrow, and the New York Times recently profiled the author. It is a fascinating read about an author whose books have been part of so many people’s childhoods. Below is one of my favorite paragraphs from the New York Times profile.
“How does Cleary explain her popularity? ‘I wrote books to entertain,’ she told me. People often asked what she was trying to teach in her books. She would reply, ‘I’m not trying to teach anything!’ This was the same attitude she had when she was first reading. ‘If I suspected the author was trying to show me how to be a better behaved girl, I shut the book,’ she remembered.”
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