Welcome to the Deep Dive. We're the place that
takes these huge cultural figures, people you've
heard of, maybe even loved, and we cut right
to the chase. We give you the essential insights
from the source material you gave us, basically
the shortcut to understanding why they really
matter. And today, yeah, we're heading straight
for Klickitat Street. We're going deep on Beverly
Cleary, an author that honestly most of us probably
read growing up, especially if you were a kid
in the back half of the 20th century. But I think
few of us really get how Well... how groundbreaking
her work actually was for children's books groundbreaking
revolutionary yeah that feels like the right
word i mean you look at american authors particularly
for kids and young adults and she's just huge
our sources throughout this number that honestly
stopped me in my tracks 91 million copies 81
million sold worldwide since what 1950 when her
first book came out that's not just successful
for a children's author that puts her up there
with some of the biggest names in you know adult
fiction it's kind of stacked Yeah, it really
is. And that's the mission for this deep dive,
right? To look at the sources, the biography,
the critical stuff, figure out why. Why did her
books connect so deeply with so many kids for
so long? Because Cleary, she wasn't just writing
stories. She was really championing something
new, something we now call emotional realism.
Okay, emotional realism. Let's unpack that a
bit. Well, she wasn't really doing myths or like
heavy -handed moral tales, not in the main click
-a -tat street stuff anyway, and not really talking
animals, apart from Ralph S. Mouse, who we should
definitely get to, but mostly. She focused laser
-like on the messy, sometimes confusing, sometimes
really funny everyday life of ordinary kids,
middle -class kids specifically. Right. So let's
name the key players in this universe she built.
You've got Henry Huggins, of course, the sort
of original good kid. kid with his dog, Ribsy.
Yep. And then crucially, the Quimby's. Ramona
Quimby, the chaotic, totally unfiltered younger
sister, and Beezus, her, let's say, often exasperated
older sister. And they all live in this very
specific place. Oh, yeah. The Grant Park neighborhood.
Northeast Portland, Oregon. Klickitat Street,
the school nearby. Yeah. It's all so real, so
vividly drawn. It almost feels like another character
in the books. It shows how committed she was
to grounding everything in something... observable,
something tangible. She basically put her own
childhood neighborhood on the literary map forever.
And here's a fact that just anchors the whole
thing, speaks to how long her influence lasted.
Beverly Cleary, born 1916, died. 2021 wow she
lived to be 104 years old just think about that
for a second the sheer sweep of history she saw
world war one the depression tv coming in the
moon landing the internet all of it and through
it all she's writing these stories about childhood
that somehow stayed relevant writing across what
three four generations of readers yeah and yet
Those core feelings she tapped into, the frustration
of being little, the confusion, the fierce sort
of determination kids have, that stuff just never
got old. That's the genius we're digging into.
And it really started with her own childhood.
Okay, let's go there. Section one. The reluctant
reader who became a literary pioneer. So she
was born Beverly Atlee Bunn, 1916, McMinnville,
Oregon. Right. But her very first years, up until
she was about six, were actually out on a farm.
Yamhill, Oregon. Rural setting. She was an only
child, raised Presbyterian, pretty quiet, farm
-focused life. And then, bam, big shift. The
family packs up and moves to Portland. Her dad
got a job there as a bank security officer. And
that move from the quiet farm to the city, even
Portland back in the 1920s, that was tough for
her. A real shock to the system. But the sources
suggest the really difficult part, the thing
that kind of shaped her future path, happened
at school. First grade. Ah, the infamous blackbirds.
Exactly. This is like the critical origin story
moment for her entire career. She started school
and she really, really struggled with reading.
And back then it was common practice, maybe not
the best practice, but common to group kids by
ability. Kids were having trouble. They got put
in the lowest group, the blackbirds. And she
said later to be a blackbird was to be disgraced.
Yeah. Can you imagine? First grade. And you're
already labeled shamed. She felt embarrassed,
singled out as being slower than the others.
And the sources show it wasn't just that she
found the mechanics hard, which she later thought
might have been partly because she'd been sick
a lot, things like chickenpox, smallpox. But
it was also something else, something more profound.
She was bored out of her mind. She found the
books themselves incredibly stupid. Right. That's
the key. It wasn't just difficult. It was uninteresting.
These early reader books, they were often really
simplistic, repetitive, you know, C -spot run.
Or they had these weirdly formal, unnatural ways
of talking. Or were just trying to hammer home
some obvious moral, she just didn't get why books
couldn't be funny. Or about real people doing
normal, recognizable things. So that feeling,
that frustration of finding books totally unrelatable
as a six -year -old, that became the driving
force for her entire career. She basically spent
her life writing the books she wished she'd had.
It's an amazing feedback loop, isn't it? So she's
struggling, feeling ashamed about being a blackbird.
And then third grade, rainy afternoon, epiphany
time. The Dutch Twins. Yes, by Lucy Fitch Perkins.
And just the title tells you something, right?
It's about twins, ordinary kids, having adventures,
getting into little scrapes, but just... Skeen
kids. In Holland, okay, but still, kids. It wasn't
fantasy. It wasn't preaching. It was relatable,
finally. Exactly. For young Barely, who found
everything else either dull or trying too hard
to teach her something, this was just fun. Pure
enjoyment. And that was the moment. Reading clicked.
It went from being this source of shame and boredom
to something she actually wanted to do. She started
spending tons of time at the library after that.
That need for stories about real kids set her
whole direction. It's really powerful, that symmetry.
The thing that caused her pain, the lack of relatable
books, became the thing she dedicated her life
to fixing. And people noticed her talent early
on. The sources mentioned that by sixth grade,
she was writing these essays for class, and one
of her teachers actually pulled her aside and
said, you know, based on these, you should think
about becoming a children's writer. Wow. So the
seed was planted way back then. Yeah, even though
actually getting there, becoming a published
author, that took a while longer. Right, it wasn't
a straight path. Let's trace that journey in
section two. From library science to full -time
writer. So she's going through school, aiming
for college, but... This is happening during
the Great Depression. Yeah, that context is crucial.
Money was incredibly tight for everyone. So to
make college affordable, she started out at Chaffee
Junior College down in California. But her goal
even then was pretty clear. She wanted to be
a children's librarian. That connection to kids
and books was already locked in. Then she transfers
to UC Berkeley, gets her B .A. in English in
1938. And she wasn't just studying. She was working
hard to pay for it. Our sources list jobs like
seamstress, chambermaid. Real grit there. You
can definitely see echoes of that determination
that need to make ends meet in some of her characters
later, like the Quimby family. And Berkeley was
also where she met her future husband, Clarence
Cleary, at a school dance, apparently. Right.
And this little biographical detail actually
tells you something important about her personality.
Her parents, the sources say, really didn't approve
of Clarence because he was Roman Catholic and
they were Presbyterian. A bigger deal back then.
Definitely. So faced with their disapproval,
what did Beverly and Clarence do? They eloped
in 1940, just went off and got married. That
streak of independence, that sort of refusal
to just accept rules that didn't make sense to
her. Right. That's pure Ramona, isn't it? It
was part of Beverly herself. Absolutely. And
she showed that same focus in her career path,
too. After Berkeley, she went and got a second
bachelor's degree. This one specifically in library
science from the University of Washington in
1939, really cementing that professional focus.
In that experience, working as a librarian, that
became the real launch pad for her writing. First
in Yakima, Washington until about 1940, and then
later during the war, she was a post -librarian
at an army hospital in Oakland, California from
42 to 45. This put her right on the front lines
with her audience. Front lines is a good way
to put it, because this is where that first grade
frustration kind of comes back. But now she's
the librarian, the one trying to help the kids.
Exactly. She saw these kids coming into the library
day after day, and they'd ask her for books about,
you know, boys like them, girls like them, relatable
characters. And she realized she just didn't
have enough good stuff to give them. She felt
this deep empathy for them. She could see the
gap plain as day. The books on the shelves were
often about kids who were too perfect or too
wealthy or maybe British children having adventures
that didn't quite resonate or they were just
there to teach a lesson. Right. And she was doing
story hours, reading aloud to the kids, and she
started really noticing how silly some of the
writing was, how disconnected from the way kids
actually experience the world or even just the
way people talk. This is where the famous puppy
line comes in. Oh, yeah. This is priceless. The
sources highlight this specific line from a children's
book she had to read aloud. It went something
like, Bow wow, I like the green grass, said the
puppy. A puppy discussing his landscaping preferences.
It's absurd. And Cleary just thought, that's
ridiculous. No puppy I had known talked like
that. It's funny. But it's also profound. It
crystallized for her just how much children's
literature at the time was missing the mark.
It lacked honesty. It lacked realism. It lacked
a genuine kid's voice. And that realization,
that professional frustration, really pushed
her towards writing herself. She was already
in her 30s when she started. So it wasn't about
wanting to be famous initially. It was almost
a professional obligation, she felt. I think
so. She talked about the missionary spirit of
librarians, this idea that they had a duty to
encourage reading, yes, but also to find good,
appropriate books for kids. She felt she had
to provide what the kids were actually asking
for, what they needed, stories that felt real.
She took their requests seriously. And that seriousness,
that commitment, leads us right to Klickitat
Street, Section 3. creating Klickitat Street,
Henry, Ramona, and this idea of emotional realism.
Okay, so first book, Henry Huggins, comes out
in 1950. And the idea for Henry, it really did
come directly from those story hours in Yakima.
She was essentially just writing down the kinds
of stories she'd been making up for those kids
who wanted books about... boys like them. So
Henry was the answer to that request. Just an
average kid, not super rich, not a genius. His
problems were things like, how do I get my new
dog Ribsy home on the bus without the driver
noticing? Or what do I do with all these guppies
I won? Hilariously ordinary stuff. Exactly. The
stuff of real childhood. But even Henry Huggins
wasn't an immediate slam dunk. The sources say
it was actually rejected at first by the publisher
Morrow. She had to revise it. And that revision
is absolutely key, isn't it? Because that's where
the Quimby's come in. That's right. The first
draft apparently mostly had only children, kind
of reflecting her own upbringing. But during
the revision, she realized she needed more family
dynamics, more neighborhood texture. So she added
these two sisters who live nearby, Beatrice or
Beezus, and her little sister, Ramona Quimby.
Just to add some flavor, some sibling reality,
annoyance, rivalry, that whole dynamic. Yeah.
But Ramona, well, Ramona wasn't meant to stay
in the background. She was introduced almost
as a pest, this disruptive force in Henry's world.
But she was just too vivid, too full of chaotic
energy. She kind of demanded her own spotlight.
She steals the show. Pretty much. So even though
they appear in Henry Huggins, the first book
really about the sisters, Beezus and Ramona,
doesn't come out until 1955. And that happened
partly because a publisher specifically asked
her to write a book about a kindergartner. Which
she wasn't keen on at first. No, she resisted.
Apparently, she'd never even been to kindergarten
herself, so she didn't feel she knew it well
enough. Yeah. But then something shifted. Her
own twin children, Malcolm and Marianne, were
born in 1955. Real life research. You got it.
Suddenly she had this front row seat to the unfiltered,
often baffling, hilarious, intense world of very
young children. And that experience, that close
observation, gave her everything she needed to
really bring Ramona fully to life, especially
in books like Ramona the Pest, which came out
later in 68. So that connection between her life
and her writing is super direct there. And it
all feeds into that core theme you mentioned,
the daily minutia of childhood, making compelling
drama out of everyday problems. Exactly. Small
injustices, perplexing mysteries, the stuff that
feels huge when you're five or eight. She took
that seriously. That's the emotional realism.
Let's pause on that emotional realism because
other writers wrote about kids' feelings, but
Cleary did it differently, didn't she? I think
the difference was the seriousness with which
she treated the child's perspective. Like, think
about Ramona wanting to be a proper passenger
in the grocery cart, needing a seatbelt and a
ticket. It's funny to us. Right. But for Ramona,
it's logical. It's important. Oh, gosh, the time
she wears her pajamas to school on D -E -A -R
day, drop everything and read day because she
completely misunderstood the instructions. For
an adult, it's a cute mistake. For Ramona, it's
mortifying. Public humiliation of the highest
order. Or the toothpaste. That one always gets
me. Trying to be helpful by squeezing the entire
tube into the sink so it wouldn't get lost. Yes.
Then realizing the horror of wasting family money
and frantically trying to stuff it back in the
tube. It's so specific, so physical, and so psychologically
true to how a kid might panic about disappointing
their parents. That's pure clarity. Exactly.
She understood that to a child. A broken doll
or getting a bad haircut or, like you said, the
toothpaste fiasco. Or even taking one bite out
of every single apple in a box. because you're
furious, which Ramona does. Oh, I remember that.
Those aren't trivial things. There are moments
of genuine crisis, deep feeling, domestic tragedy
even. Yeah. And treating them with that weight,
that respect, that's why the book still feels
so real. Okay, but wait. We're talking all about
realism, ordinary life. How does Ralph S. Mouse
fit into this? You know, the mouse and the motorcycle.
A talking mouse who rides a toy motorcycle. That
seems like a total departure, doesn't it? That's
a really fair question. And the sources do address
this. The Rolf S. Maus series, there were three
main books starting in 65. It definitely feels
different from Klickitat Street. It's more fantastical,
obviously. So what's the deal? Was she just trying
something different? Well... Yes, partly. It
shows her versatility. You can see Ralph as maybe
an escape valve, a way to play with more traditional
adventure story tropes. But even in the Ralph
books, the core Cleary philosophy is still there.
Ralph isn't just, you know, a generic talking
animal sidekick. Right, he has personality. A
lot of personality. He's independent. He's adventurous.
He kind of chafes against his big, cautious mouse
family. He wants freedom, autonomy. So the emotions
driving him, that desire for independence, for
adventure, maybe even a bit of rebellion. Those
are still very real, very relatable kid feelings.
The vehicle is fantasy, sure. But the emotional
engine, that's still pure, cleary realism in
a way. That makes sense. Like the emotional truth
remains, even if the circumstances are fantastical.
Okay, so whether it was realism or fantasy with
a real core, her work clearly resonated. The
awards started piling up. Oh, absolutely. Huge
recognition. The big one, the Newbery Medal.
She won that in 1984 for Dear Mr. Henshaw. And
that book is interesting because it shows her
evolving, too. It's quite different from the
Ramona books. How so? It tackles tougher, more
contemporary issues for the time, specifically
divorce and loneliness. And it does it all through
letters and journal entries from this boy, Leibotz.
It's a really poignant, quieter book in some
ways. So she wasn't just sticking to the funny
stuff. The emotional realism could also mean
tackling harder truths as society changed. Exactly.
And she also won the National Book Award in 1981,
specifically for the paperback edition of Ramona
and Her Mother. That award really recognized
how much she connected with kids directly through
those accessible paperback editions. And the
Ramona books just kept getting accolades, right?
Newbery honors, too. Yep. Both Ramona and Her
Father and Ramona Quimby, age eight. received
Newbery honors, which for anyone not familiar
is basically like being the runner up for the
medal. So multiple times her work was judged
to be right at the very top tier of American
children's literature. Just incredible consistency.
And for listeners who want to hear her story
in her own words, she wrote memoirs too. Yes,
two of them. A Girl from Yamhill about her childhood
and My Own Two Feet covering her college and
early adult years. They're really insightful.
And we should probably quickly mention the screen
adaptations. Her characters were so strong they
jumped off the page. For sure. There was that
Canadian TV series Ramona back in 1988, starring
a very young Sarah Pauly, which people might
remember. I remember that. And then much more
recently, the 2010 movie Ramona and Beezus, with
Joey King as Ramona and Selena Gomez as Beezus.
It just shows that the emotional core works,
whatever the format. Okay, let's move into section
four, critical significance and her monumental
legacy. Selling 91 million books tells you she
was popular, obviously. What did the literary
critics really point to as her unique contribution?
What made her important, not just popular? A
lot of the critical attention focused on the
sophistication of her style, especially her humor.
The New York Times often mentioned her humorous,
lively style. But it went deeper than just being
funny. Roger Sutton, who was editor of the Hornbook
magazine and a major voice in children's lit,
He called her funny in a very sophisticated way.
Sophisticated how? What does that mean in this
context? Not just slapstick. Right. Sutton's
point was that Cleary gets really close to satire
sometimes, but she never crosses the line into
being cruel or mean to her characters. The humor
comes from the situation or from the child's
completely earnest misunderstanding of the illogical
adult world. It never comes from mocking the
child themselves, especially Ramona. Cleary never
lets you laugh at Ramona in the way that diminishes
her feelings or her dignity. When Ramona, say,
draws those pictures of people with giant feet
and gets upset when the teacher assumes one is
her mother, the humor is in Ramona's literalness
and in maybe the teacher's awkwardness, but never
in making fun of Ramona's drawing skills or her
intentions. There's this deep underlying respect
for the child's perspective. And kids pick up
on that respect, you know. That's a big part
of why the books lasted. So respecting the character's
struggle while finding the humor in the situation.
Situational irony, not just laughing at someone.
Precisely. And this whole approach, this honesty,
it wasn't just nice. Critics recognized it was
genuinely ahead of its time. Professor Eliza
Drissang said Cleary's writing was decades ahead
of her time in its accuracy, its honesty, its
ability to just portray real kids without talking
down to them or simplifying them. And there was
another quote about her longevity. Yeah, but
Professor Pat Flagler made a great point. She
said Cleary's work stays fresh because she fundamentally
understood. Kids understood that they are sometimes
confused or frightened by the world around them
and that they feel deeply about things that adults
can dismiss. Cleary was maybe the first major
author to treat, say, the tragedy of a melted
popsicle or the injustice of an older sibling
getting away with something with the same kind
of narrative gravity that an adult problem might
get in another book. That makes so much sense.
And that combination, massive sales, critical
respect, groundbreaking style, it led to just
enormous institutional recognition. Oh, the honors
are incredible. And they really underscore her
impact. She won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award
back in 1975. That's a lifetime achievement award
from the American Library Association for major
contributions to children's literature. Then
the National Medal of Arts in 2003. The Library
of Congress named her a living legend in 2000.
Just top tier stuff. And back in Portland, her
hometown, the connection is literally cemented
in place, isn't it? It really is. It's wonderful.
The school she went to as a kid. Fernwood Grammar
School, it's now officially the Beverly Cleary
School. And in Grant Park, the actual neighborhood
where Henry and Ramona supposedly lived, there's
the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden for Children.
You can go there and see statues of Henry, Ribsy,
and of course Ramona mid -stride. That's fantastic.
But maybe the most fitting honors are the ones
that circle back to where she started professionally.
Librarianship. Absolutely. In 1997, the main
children's room at the Central Library in Portland
was named the Beverly Cleary Children's Library.
And even more significantly, perhaps, her alma
mater, the University of Washington's Information
School, the Library Science School, they established
the Beverly Cleary Endowed Chair for Children
and Youth Services. Wow. So that ensures her
commitment to training good children's librarians
continues on. Exactly. It honors that missionary
spirit she talked about, making sure future librarians
understand the importance of connecting kids
with the right books. It's a really profound
legacy. And even Berkeley, her undergrad alma
mater, named a huge dorm after her Beverly Cleary
Hall. Her impact really span literature, libraries,
education. It was so broad and so recognized
that even after she passed away in 2021 at 104,
the U .S. Senate passed a resolution honoring
her life and legacy. Sponsored by Oregon Senator
Ron Wyden. Think about that. A bipartisan Senate
resolution for a children's author. It shows
how deeply ingrained she is in American culture.
That's incredible. And one last fun piece of
legacy to your day. Oh, yeah. Drop everything
and read day. Her publisher, HarperCollins, promotes
it on her birthday, April 12th. The idea of just
stopping everything and reading. It feels like
such a perfect tribute to her, doesn't it? Capturing
that quiet joy she brought to so many kids. So,
OK, we've covered her life, her work, the impact.
When you boil it all down, what's the core takeaway
from this deep dive? What does it all mean? I
think the core genius of Beverly Cleary was her
ability to see the universal in the specific,
the monumental in the mundane. She took those
small, ordinary, sometimes embarrassing moments
of middle -class childhood, the fights with siblings,
the worries about parents, the small triumphs,
the confusing roles, and she infused them with
real, recognizable emotion and humor. That sophisticated,
respectful humor. She basically validated the
inner lives of ordinary kids. She saw them and
she wrote them down when maybe nobody else was,
certainly not with that level of honesty and
fun. Exactly. She was the bridge for millions
of kids who looked at the books available before
her and just didn't see themselves. She said,
yeah, Henry Huggins and his dog problems, Ramona
Quimby and her messy feelings, they deserve a
place in literature just as much as any prince
or talking animal from classic stories. It was
revolutionary in its simplicity almost. And we
know her influence runs deep. You see writers
like Judy Blume or John Seska later on, who also
push boundaries in Children's Lit. They point
back to Cleary as someone who opened the door,
who gave permission for children's books to be
messy and real and funny. All at once. Her whole
career really came from that insight she had
as a librarian, didn't it? The kids weren't getting
what they needed. They needed books about them,
not just fantasies or moral lessons handed down
from on high. Which brings us, I think, to our
final thought for you, the listener. Cleary's
revolution was injecting realism into the everyday
stuff of mid -century childhood bikes, bullies,
sisters, allowances. So if her work felt so fresh
because it captured that reality, what are the
essential, maybe messy, maybe awkward, but totally...
What are today's Blackbird moments? What are
the things that feel huge to kids now, maybe
related to online life or social pressures or
changing family structures that feel like the
equivalent of Ramona's toothpaste trauma but
aren't being written about because they seem
too small, too temporary, or maybe just too uncomfortable?
That's the space Cleary carved out, and maybe
that's the challenge she leaves us with. A great
place to leave it. That's all the time we have
for this deep dive into the world of Beverly,
Cleary, and Klickitat Street. Thanks for joining
us. Yeah, thanks for listening. listening, keep
reading, and keep noticing the big drama in the
little things.