Trained as a librarian, Beverly Cleary penned greater than 40 books and launched the world to the characters Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins.
WASHINGTON — Renowned children’s writer Beverly Cleary died Thursday at the age of 104, her writer HarperCollins announced in a statement.
Throughout her decades-long career, Cleary wrote greater than 40 books and launched the world to in style characters like Ramona and Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins and Ralph S. Mouse.
Her first novel was 1950’s “Henry Huggins,” primarily based on the youngsters she grew up with in Portland, Oregon.
“We are saddened by the passing of Beverly Cleary, some of the beloved kids’s authors of all time,” Suzanne Murphy, President and Publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books said in a statement. “Looking again, she’d typically say, ‘I’ve had a fortunate life,’ and generations of youngsters rely themselves fortunate too—fortunate to have the very actual characters Beverly Cleary created, together with Henry Huggins, Ramona and Beezus Quimby, and Ralph S. Mouse, as true mates who helped form their growing-up years.”
Cleary was born on April 12, 1916, in McMinnville, Oregon.
After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley she specialised in librarianship at the University of Washington, Seattle. According to HarperCollins, Cleary’s dream of writing for teenagers was rekindled when “just a little boy confronted me relatively ferociously throughout the circulation desk and mentioned: ‘Where are the books about children like us?’”
In 2000, Beverly Cleary was named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress. In 2003, she was awarded the National Medal of Art from the National Endowment for the Arts. And in 2009, her Ramona sequence was made right into a film, Ramona and Beezus.
She died Thursday in Carmel, California, the place she has lived for the reason that Nineteen Sixties, HarperCollins mentioned Friday.
Donations may be made in Beverly Cleary’s title to the Library Foundation of Portland, Oregon, or the Information School at the University of Washington.
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