In Appreciation of The Gifted Author Who Introduced Young Readers to Realism
The passing of Beverly Cleary on March 25, 2021 resulted in an outpouring of tributes equal to the kinds of eulogies normally reserved for Noble Prize Literature Laureates. On what would have been her 105th birthday, April 12, 2021, millions of children in the USA and abroad participated in an important childhood rite of passage: D.E.A.R. Day or Drop Everything and Read (a.k.a., Sustained Silent Reading) first introduced by the author in her book Ramona Quimby, Age 8. There were no required book talks, reports, quizzes or written summaries associated with Sustained Silent Reading. The sole purpose of D.E.A.R. time is reading for pleasure.
Beverly Cleary spent the first six years of her life on a farm near Yamhill, Oregon. It was a time of financial disaster for farmers and her father was forced to sell the family homestead and move his family to Portland to take a position as a bank guard. The move came at a time when the future author was young, vulnerable, and a virtual nonreader. In her first-grade classroom, Cleary was placed in “The Blackbirds,” the lowest reading group. On a rainy afternoon in the Portland neighborhood where she grew up, Beverly Cleary as a third-grade student finally enjoyed reading a chapter book all on her own. Cleary quickly became a voracious reader. As a child reader, she found that most of the books available to readers of her age to be about history, fairy tales, English nannies, and were overwhelmingly Eurocentric. Where were the books about children like herself? Later, as a librarian, Cleary recognized that books available to children continued to feature characters whose lives were foreign to the lives of the children she served.
In 1950, Cleary wrote her first book, Henry Huggins, a comical book about a regular boy and his mongrel pup, Ribsy. Henry lived on Portland’s Klickitat Street along with a group of friends, such as Beezus and Ramona Quimby, and Scooter McCarthy, whom children quickly embraced. Here, finally, were boys and girls whose adventures and experiences mirrored their own. Henry, Ramona, and even Ribsy moved from one seemingly catastrophic episode to another. These characters and their lives resonated with young readers. They were universal characters with ordinary lives. Henry and Ramona and their friends and pets came from families similar to their own. Parents lost jobs, had trouble paying bills, were occasionally “snappy,” and their children found their way into scrapes in elementary and middle school that were laugh-out-loud funny. Whether these children were trying to win a silver cup at a dog show or experiencing—horror of horrors—throwing up in the classroom, or trying to get their fathers to quit smoking, seemed REAL. For the next half century, Beverly Cleary wrote series and stand-alone books about children as well as two volumes of memoirs and even fantasies about a mouse and his motorcycle that totaled 42 books that have sold at least 90 million copies in the USA and worldwide and have been translated into 30 languages.
An epiphany occurred for Cleary while she was an English major at the University of California, Berkeley. In a course on novels, her professor noted, “The proper subject of the novel is universal experience.” For 50 years, Beverly Cleary was to write comical stories about the timeless but very real experiences of childhood. Generations of readers could identify with her indelible characters. Children could see themselves in her books that became both a canon for parental bedtime reading and often the first chapter books children read on their own. Her characters could bicker, tease, engage in pranks, experience misunderstandings, and even question the wisdom of grown-up rules, especially from parents and teachers, but Cleary’s characters were never mean of spirit and they always possessed a great capacity for love and forgiveness.
If there is any criticism of the body of work written by Beverly Cleary, it may be because her characters were predominantly white and from the middle class, even if only at the bottom end of that social spectrum. When I wrote to an African-American friend and colleague who is a reading and literacy giant in the United States about such a potential criticism, she replied as follows, with great insight.
I am so pleased that you are writing a tribute to Beverly Cleary. She has been such a universal appeal to children, boys and girls. The scenarios she poses are the hooks that attract children of all types. What child cannot relate to the antics of Ramona or Henry? The actions are part of childhood, not of particular groups, but of the broad spectrum of children. Cleary wrote from her experiences and her creative reservoir. I have absolutely no issue that her characters were predominantly white middle-class ones. First, I have never agreed with judging anyone in one era based on the values and behaviors of a much later era. In the 1950s and 1960s most of the characters in children's books were white/middle class. If we reject her writing based on the race issues, we might as well reject all the works of Shakespeare and Dickens. There is a different level of consciousness today. It is important to be inclusive. However, still, I have no issue with characters that are mono-ethnic if those are the environments that are being discussed. What I do wish is that more Black, Asian, Hispanic, Arab, Native American and other minority authors would write wonderful stories about those cultures. If different races fit in the stories, so be it. Why should fewer stories be written about white children? Many more stories should be written involving other races. Let us encourage both minority and majority authors to do that. But let's not denigrate authors for writing about children in their experiential range.
Honors
Beverly Cleary was one of the most highly honored authors of her time. She won the 1981 National Book Award (Juvenile Book) for Ramona and Her Mother. The American Library Association (ALA) twice honored her with Newbery Honors for Ramona and Her Father (1978) and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (1982). She won the coveted Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw (1984). The ALA also presented her with the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 1975 for “substantial and lasting contributions to children’s literature.” In April, 2000, the Library of Congress designated Cleary as a Living Legend. In 2003, she received the National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts. In Oregon, there are schools, libraries, and even a sculpture garden named in her honor. So, too, have university dormitories and endowed chairs been named in her honor. The accolades the author herself most cherished were the statewide reading awards, which students in at least 35 states directly voted for themselves, in praise of her fiction.
Two of the Best
Cleary, Beverly. Ramona Quimby, Age 8. Illus. by Jacqueline Rogers. New York: HarperCollins, 2016. Newbery Honor Medal.
In 2016, HarperCollins released new reprints of many of Beverly Cleary’s series books with introductions by contemporary authors such as Judy Blume, Kate DiCamillo, and Amy Poehler, whose own writing careers have been modeled upon Cleary’s writing, plus new illustrations, and a brief interview with the author, on the occasion of her 100th birthday.
Henry Huggins was Beverly Cleary’s first series hero, but throughout her career as a writer, the author often noted that her favorite creation was the character of Ramona. In Ramona Quimby, Age 8, readers meet a high-spirited girl on the occasion of her first day of third grade. Ramona is an exuberant child who seems to tumble from one laugh-out-loud episode to another. Ramona experiences what she believes to be a special bond with her new teacher on the very first day of school. Mrs. Whaley introduces D.E.A.R. (a.k.a., Sustained Silent Reading). “Drop Everything and Read,” which appeals to Ramona’s burgeoning love of silent reading.
The school’s lunchroom is the site of her first disaster. Fearless third-graders chose to slam hard-boiled eggs against their foreheads. Over-worked Mrs. Quimby accidentally packed Ramona’s lunch with a raw egg. Disaster occurs as the runny egg mixes into Ramona’s hair and egg yolk spills down her face. She is rushed to the principal’s office where the school secretary tries to remedy Ramona’s ruinous consequence. Matters take a turn for the worst when her teacher, Mrs. Whaley, appears with Ramona out of sight, but not out of hearing range. Mrs. Whaley says, “I hear my little show-off came in with egg in her hair. What a nuisance.” Ramona’s previously happy days in the third grade have been turned upside down. Her teacher believes she is a “show-off” and a “nuisance.”
Back home at the Quimby household, circumstances also appear to be grim. The family finances dictate eating low-cost meats. After some unfair criticisms of their mother’s cooking, Ramona and her sister are assigned the task of preparing the evening meal on their own. The tumultuous results are hilarious.
Already believing she is unloved by her teacher, Ramona has the worst disaster she can imagine. Her tummy revolts and she throws up in the classroom. Her bout with the flu results in quiet days at home with her mother nursing her back to health. Ramona’s mood is elevated when a classmate delivers a package from Mrs. Whaley. Every classmate has written a “Get Well” note to Ramona and her teacher has sent home a book for Ramona to read for the class assignment of creating an oral book report. Mr. Quimby encourages his daughter to promote her book to the class in the form of the TV commercials she has been watching during her recuperation. His advice is a triumph and Ramona’s creativity kicks into full gear. The surprise at the end of the book is as happy an ending as readers can find in children’s literature.
The gravitas of Ramona’s third-grade “disasters” both at home and at school are the kinds of happenings or events that really do happen to primary-age children. Life can and does sting sometimes. However, kind and loving neighborhood friends, classmates, teachers, and parents can ultimately be depended upon to be both loving and fair and to make the world a much better place in which to survive, thrive, and grow to maturity.
Cleary, Beverly. Dear Mr. Henshaw. Illus. by Paul O. Zelinsky. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Newbery Medal.
As kind and generous as Beverly Cleary appears in the wonderful series characters she has created, she was well known for her opposition to school projects of having students write personal letters to their favorite authors. In an essay that appeared in the New York Times Book Review in 1985, Cleary expressed her belief that children would be far better served by reading the latest new books by their favorite authors than spending time writing letters to them. Therefore, it is ironic that her most highly honored book, Dear Mr. Henshaw, is an epistolary novel composed entirely of real and imagined letters (the latter recorded in a secret diary) between her ten-year-old protagonist, Leigh Botts, and his favorite author, Boyd Henshaw, who wrote, Ways to Amuse a Dog.
Leigh Botts is a stand-alone protagonist (unlike Cleary’s series characters such as Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins) and while the novel does have some peak moments of humor, it is almost certainly Cleary’s darkest work of children’s fiction.
Leigh Botts is a single child of newly divorced parents, complete with a father who has never really grown up and does not accept adult responsibilities. As a result of the divorce, Leigh is forced to leave his old school and friends behind and move to a new town where he fails to make new friends. Leigh is further plagued with the thought that others will believe his first name is a girl’s name. He has even lost his beloved dog, Bandit. Leigh lives with his mother in borderline poverty. His father has custody of Bandit and conveniently forgets monthly support payments or promised phone calls to his son. If life is not already hard enough, someone in his new sixth-grade classroom is stealing all the good things from his lunch bag.
Feeling alone in a new school and with no new friends, Leigh befriends the school custodian, Mr. Fridley. The closest character that Leigh has as a surrogate father ends up being his favorite author, Mr. Henshaw. Leigh’s first attempt to connect with his favorite author is a sweetly innocent missive composed when he was in the second grade of his old school.
Dear Mr. Henshaw,
My teacher read your book about the dog to our class. It was funny. We licked it.
Your friend,
Leigh Botts (boy)
One of the joys of this highly honored novel is the growth readers witness as the young protagonist matures from childhood upwards to the difficult challenges of early adolescence. Leigh also grows exceptionally as a writer from his innocent second-grade correspondence to his final sixth-grade letter, signed “the author, Leigh Botts.”
A highlight of this novel is the role the character Mr. Henshaw plays in Leigh’s development as both a person and a writer. When Leigh writes teacher-assigned ten questions to his favorite author to respond to, Mr. Henshaw turns the tables on him. Boyd Henshaw answers Leigh’s questions, but then provides ten new questions of his own that he expects his young fan to answer. Leigh is dumbfounded that his favorite author would presume to ask HIM to also answer questions! Mr. Henshaw goes even further. He argues that if Leigh’s aspirations to be an author are genuine, he needs to immediately begin keeping a daily journal. As his TV is broken, Leigh has little choice but to answer the ten questions posed for him, as well as to fill his empty hours by writing imaginary letters to Mr. Henshaw in his new PRIVATE journal.
A parallel plot line provides much of the humor found in Dear Mr. Henshaw. How can Leigh stop the theft of the best parts of his school lunch? He proves to be a creative inventor and problem solver as he devises a burglar alarm to foil the cloakroom lunch bag thief. When Leigh accidentally sets off the alarm himself during the noon lunch hour, he receives new admiration and offers of friendship from his peers. Can he help them create similar alarms to foil would-be thieves?
Following the growing maturity of “the author, Leigh Botts,” as he negotiates the occasionally hazardous shoals of his sixth grade school year, is a joy. Readers see giftedness flower even in difficult circumstances. The high point of the novel occurs in the denouement when Leigh meets a REAL author, who just happens to know Boyd Henshaw. She reveals (what we already know) that he is a good man. He is also a fine writer and so, too, does Leigh Botts appear to possess the potential to become the same.
Home Activities
HarperCollins Publishers maintain a colorful and expansive Beverly Cleary Internet site <beverlycleary.com> that includes at least six links to such topics as the author’s personal history, her books, her most popular characters, and teacher lesson plans. Students may particularly enjoy the “Fun & Games” page that features character quizzes, crossword puzzles, a Ramona Activity Book, and an event kit for hosting a Ramona, Henry Huggins, or Leigh Botts party. The character quizzes feature ten trivia questions about Cleary’s most popular characters, including Ramona Quimby and Leigh Botts. Encourage children to borrow an idea from Dear Mr. Henshaw. Once they have successfully answered the ten-question trivia questions about Ramona and Leigh, they can write ten brand new trivia questions and forward them to HarperCollins.
When Dear Mr. Henshaw was published in 1983, its protagonist, Leigh Botts, was ten years old. He was a sixth-grade student in Pacific Grove, California. How old is he today and where does he live? Is he a bona fide author? Ask children to write a book jacket author panel that briefly describes the author, Leigh Botts. What kinds of books does he write? Does he have a website on the Internet? What are some of the titles of his books? Has he won any book awards?
Many authors create imaginary settings for inter-related characters in multiple works of their fiction. Beverly Cleary adopted the name of the Klickitat Public Square in Portland, Oregon, and placed her favorite characters on a street she similarly named. It is the childhood neighborhood of Ramona and Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins, and even their pets, such as Henry’s lovable mutt, Ribsy. Ask children to imagine such a fictional setting and to briefly describe some of the children or young adults (plus their pets) that live there. They can take an even bigger step and tell an original story about one of the characters who lives in their inventive settings. (Beverly Cleary believed that storytelling was the first mandatory step to becoming an author.)
