How old is beverly cleary right now

She produced two volumes of autobiography for young readers, "A Girl from Yamhill," on her childhood, and "My Own Two Feet," which tells the story of her college and young adult years up to the time of her first book. People are astonished at the things I remember. I think it comes from living in isolation on a farm the first six years of my life where my main activity was observing," Cleary said.

Cleary was born Beverly Bunn on April 12, , in McMinnville, Oregon, and lived on a farm in Yamhill until her family moved to Portland when she was school-age.

She was a slow reader, which she blamed on illness and a mean-spirited first-grade teacher who disciplined her by snapping a steel-tipped pointer across the back of her hands. By sixth or seventh grade, "I decided that I was going to write children's stories," she said.

Cleary graduated from junior college in Ontario, California, and the University of California at Berkeley, where she met her husband, Clarence. They married in ; Clarence Cleary died in They were the parents of twins, a boy and a girl born in who inspired her book "Mitch and Amy. Cleary studied library science at the University of Washington and worked as the children's librarian at Yakima, Wash. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and inspired Japanese, Danish and Swedish television programs based on the Henry Huggins series.

Skip Navigation. The book featured Henry, his friends Beezus and Ramona, and the rambunctious lives of the children who lived on Klickitat Street. Cleary wrote more than thirty-nine books, including two memoirs, during her decades-long career. But yet she packs so much into every word.

Cleary received almost countless awards in her long life, including a National Medal of the Arts, multiple Newbery Honors and in she was named a Library of Congress Living Legend. More than 91 million copies of her books have sold in more than twenty countries and fourteen languages.

And many of her stories have been adapted for television and film. Beverly Cleary was predeceased by her husband, Clarence Cleary, and is survived by their two children, Malcolm and Marianne, three grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Today, Oregon author Beverly Cleary turns ! She wrote more than 40 books in a career that spanned more than half a century, vividly chronicling the lives of fictional kids on Klickitat Street who bore more than passing resemblances to the children she keenly observed in real life.

Generations of readers have special affection for Ramona Quimby, the scrappy, stubborn younger sister to Beezus. Cleary often said Ramona debuted as an afterthought ; after she realized that most of her initial characters were only-children, she dreamed up Ramona and named her after a girl in the neighborhood.

In she won a Newbury Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw , a book she wrote after two young fans asked her to write about a boy whose parents were divorced. She was also a working mother who wrote while raising her twins, Marianne and Malcolm.

She never waited for inspiration, she just got to it. As Cleary evolved from author to legend, the Oregon native always remained matter-of-fact about her success——and clear-eyed about the reason for it.

When she was asked in about the secret to the popularity of her books, Cleary answered with a nod to the little boy who inspired her first book——and to her own childhood, which always remained front of mind.

Contact us at letters time.