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US children’s author Beverly Cleary dead at 104
WASHINGTON, March 27, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – American children’s author
Beverly Cleary, the creator of iconic characters including Ramona
Quimby and Henry Huggins, has died at 104, her publisher said Friday.
The librarian-turned-writer died on Thursday in Carmel, California,
her home since the 1960s, Harper Collins Publishers said in a
statement.
With titles like “Henry Huggins” (1950) and “Ramona and Her
Father,” (1978) beloved by generations of young readers, Cleary’s
works explored everyday life through the eyes of children. And she did
it with wit and sympathy, touching on topics ranging from lunchroom
antics and sibling rivalries to a parent’s job loss.
Cleary was inspired to start writing when “a little boy faced me
rather ferociously across the circulation desk and said: ‘Where are
the books about kids like us?'” her publisher quoted her as saying.
“I wanted to read about the sort of boys and girls that I knew in
my neighborhood and in my school,” she told NPR in 1999.
“And in my childhood, many years ago, children’s books seemed to be
about English children, or pioneer children. And that wasn’t what I
wanted to read. And I think children like to find themselves in
books.”
Cleary published more than 40 books, with more than 85 million
copies sold. They were translated into 29 languages.
“Henry Huggins,” her first book, about a third-grader who adopts a
skinny stray dog named Ribsy, was an immediate hit. From there, she
wrote more books about Henry and his friends on Klickitat Street in
Portland, Oregon.
The most famous of the gang was Ramona Quimby, a young girl full of
sass and moxie, living by the motto: “A littler person sometimes had
to be a little bit noisier and a little bit more stubborn in order to
be noticed at all.”
In addition to a long list of literary accolades, Cleary was named
a “Living Legend” by the US Library of Congress in 2000, and awarded
the National Medal of Art from the National Endowment for the Arts in
2003.
BSS/AFP/MRU/0900hrs