Beverly Cleary, the children’s book author beloved by generations of young readers, has died in Carmel Valley, California, according to reports. The Oregon-born writer is credited with being among the first children’s authors to eschew fantastical or adventure tales, and focusing on ordinary settings, finding conflict and wonder within the interiors of average, middle class youngsters, or, as she put it “grubby kids.” She was 104 years old.
Cleary lived with her family on a farm until she was six, when her father got a job at a Portland bank. The Grant Park section, with its folksy-sounding Klickitat Street, informed the corpus of her work. After some time at the University of California, Berkeley, where she met her husband of 64 years, she received a degree in library science at the University of Washington. She found work as a children’s librarian in Yakima, Washington, then at an Army base in Oakland during World War II, and at a book shop in Berkeley.
With a keen sense of what young readers were looking for, she turned to the typewriter herself. In 1950, at age 34, she published her first book, Henry Huggins, featuring illustrations by Louis Darling, Jr. This initial work kicked off a series that lasted 14 years, and included numerous foibles with Henry’s pooch Ribsy. It also included a number of neighborhood kids, including Beatrice “Beezus” Quimby and her younger sister Ramona.
Though an only child herself, the Quimby sisters became Cleary’s most famous accomplishment. The first book, Beezus and Ramona, was published in 1955. Ramona the Pest followed in 1968, with Ramona the Brave in 1975, Ramona and Her Father in 1977, Ramona and Her Mother in 1979, Ramona Quimby, Age 8 in 1981, Ramona Forever in 1984, and finally Ramona’s World in 1999. The Quimby stories were adapted into a Canadian television series in 1988 starring Sarah Polley, and in 2010 Joey King and Selena Gomez starred as Ramona and Beezus in a film directed by Elizabeth Allen.
While Cleary’s lasting legacy will be most felt with these expressive stories of everyday life, she still made her mark with fantasy. The Mouse and the Motorcycle, published in 1965, led to two follow-ups, Runaway Ralph (1970) and Ralph S. Mouse (1982), which featured a mouse that could do things that real mice cannot actually do. (These three stories were adapted to ABC Television specials in the 1980s and early 1990s.) Cleary also wrote Socks in 1973, about a cat trying to find acceptance in a new family, told from the pet’s perspective. It inspired the name of the cat adopted by Bill and Hillary Clinton when they were in the White House.
Over the years she won just about every prize one can in her field, including the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the American Library Association, the Newberry Medal, and the National Book Award for Children’s Fiction. She was named a “living legend” by the Library of Congress and received the National Medal of Arts. The Grant Park section of Portland features statues of her characters and the elementary school has been named in her honor.
Cleary’s books have sold over 85 million copies and have been translated into 29 different languages.
Cleary’s passing brought about a wave of remembrances from notable people on social media, including Dr. Jill Biden, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Chelsea Clinton, Reese Witherspoon, Mia Farrow, Jenny Han, Gov. Kate Brown, and others.
— Why Meghan and Harry’s Revelations About Racism Within the Royal Family Were So Devastating
— After the Year of No Bras, Things Are Looking Up
— The Hamptons Rids Itself of Donald Trump Jr. Ahead of High Season
— The New, Sad Irony of the Rift Between Prince William and Prince Harry
— Caroline Rose Giuliani’s Unicorn Tale: Three-Way Sex Has Made Me a Better Person
— A Brief History of Piers Morgan’s One-Sided TV Feud With Meghan Markle
— 20 Women-Owned Fashion Brands for Celebrating Women’s History Month
— From the Archive: Meghan Markle, an American Princess
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.