Beverly Cleary, the beloved children's novelist, best known for the Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby series of novels, has passed away at the age of 104.
Cleary was born in McMinnville, Oregon and later grew up in Portland, Oregon. Her childhood was the inspiration for her later series of books set in Portland on Klickitat Street. Clearly became a children's librarian and she was quite interested in the fact that the kids that she served would often complain about there being no children's novels that they could relate to, as the books were all about rather fantastical surroundings and adventures. Clearly specifically cited one boy who asked, "Where are the books about the kids like us?" when she finally wrote her first children's novel in 1951, Henry Huggins, about a relatively ordinary boy named Henry and his adorable furry best friend, Ribsy (Louis Darling did the illustrations for the novel).
Years before comic book fans were used to interconnected stories set in a shared universe, Cleary was developing her own "Klickitat Street" universe, as Henry had a close friend named Beezus Quimby (the name came from the fact that her little sister, Ramona, could not pronounce Beatrice when she was a little girl, saying "Beezus" instead and the name stuck) and in fact, the second book in the Henry Huggins series was called Henry and Beezus. Beezus' annoying little sister, Ramona, was a regular presence in the novels, but only a minor one, outside of one 1955 book, Beezus and Ramona, which starred the Quimby sisters. By the 1960s, the Huggins series of books were coming to a close, with one final book, Ribsy, in which Henry barely even appeared (Ribsy is lost and goes on a series of misadventures). In 1968, Cleary then gave Ramona her first spotlight book, Ramona the Pest, which played off of the earlier characterization of Ramona as Beezus' annoying little sister, only now from Ramona's perspective (as she wonders what it means to be a "pest" and how she can avoid it).
Ramona soon became the most successful character in the "Klickitat Street" universe, and Cleary would write six more Ramona novels (amusingly, Henry Huggins would continue to appear ocasionally as a background character), with the books becoming more and more popular as time went on and new ones were released. 1979's Ramona and Her Mother won the National Book Award (interestingly, it won the 1981 National Book Award, as the National Book Award used to give out awards to new hardcovers and new paperbacks, with the paperbacks, of course, almost always being books that had already been published as hardcovers, like Ramona and Her Mother). 1981's Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and 1984's Ramona Forever were both Newberry Honors winners. Cleary wrote one final Ramona book, Ramona's World, in 1999, before retiring from writing.
Other notable Cleary works were the Ralph S. Mouse (about an adventurous little mouse) series, staring with 1965's The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and Dear Mr. Henshaw, a Newberry Medal-winning book about a boy dealing with his parents' divorce through a series of letters to his favorite writer. Cleary also wrote a series of novels based on the Leave it to Beaver TV series in the 1960s.
Among the many honors Cleary received over the years were the National Medal of Arts, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal and having a school named after her in Oregon.
Cleary is survived by her twin children, Malcolm and Marianne, whose childhoods helped inspire many of her novels.
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