In honor of her birthday I wanted to read one of her books, but I don't own any. Well, I have one of the Ramona books in my classroom, but I didn't think to bring it home for the weekend. However, I read an article on Slate about her memoir A Girl from Yamhill, and I decided to see if my town library had it. They do, but it's out. However, her subsequent memoir, My Own Two Feet was on the shelf, so I brought it home.
It was surprisingly hard to put down. During the Depression, California was offering free community college to all of its residents. Beverly lived in Oregon, but she had relatives in California who invited her to live with them so she could get an education. She wasn't asked to do anything but keep her bedroom neat and bake two cakes each week for the family. Her grandfather sent her $5 every month, which was a big help back then. After her first year, she had to find other living arrangements because her relatives had an elderly grandmother move in and take over her bedroom. However, she proved in this book that she's nothing if not resourceful. She found a roommate and they rented a space in an old woman's home where they shared a pull-out couch bed. Whens he graduated, she moved on to a four-year school and hemmed skirts and knitted in order to make money for her room and board.
Other fun facts about Beverly Clearly:
- She got a D in botany and decided to retake it. Her subsequent A made her grade average out to a B.
- She took geology and loved it.
- She needed glasses but her mother absolutely refused to pay for them, saying that men wouldn't find her as attractive if she was wearing them.
- She took a fencing class during her junior year (epee, in case my fellow fencers were wondering).
- She and her husband eloped because her parents wouldn't approve of her marrying a Catholic.
The book ends with the publication of her first book, Henry Huggins. She wanted to write books for the children she knew when she was a children's librarian, who didn't want to read the classics. They just wanted to read stories about kids they could relate to.
The first book I ever read by her was Ramona and her Mother, which my mom picked out for me at the Enfield Public Library here in Connecticut. I remember the story as well as the cover, which was yellow and had the two of them blowing on dandelions on it.
Beverly Cleary, like Judy Blume and Lois Lowry, is one of those authors who has just always been around for me. It was really fun to read more about her real life and family and see what obstacles she had to overcome in order to achieve her two main goals: to become a librarian and to write children's books.
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