Beverly Cleary Children Quotations

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.

I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.

I had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom - there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.

I was an only child; I didn't have a sister, or sisters.

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.

I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.

I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.

What interests me is what children go through while growing up.

As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be 'better' children.

I don't think children themselves have changed that much. It's the world that has changed.

Children want to do what the grownups do. Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.

I longed for funny stories about the sort of children who lived in my neighborhood.

I think adults sometimes don't think about how children are feeling about the adult problems.

Children want to do what grownups do.

I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.

Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.

I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.