Ramona and the gang do seem to be weathering the transition from Baby Boom children to Millennial generation just fine.īorn Beverly Bunn, she grew up during the Depression in a small town, the child of a wrathful mother and a stoic father. (Editors’ update: As Cleary celebrates her 100th birthday in April of 2016, her books continue to demonstrate remarkable staying power.) In an NPR interview just before her 90th birthday, Cleary said that the world has changed, but kids have not. New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, a fellow native of Yamhill, Oregon, considers Cleary to be as iconic an American figure as Norman Rockwell (“each is a great artist”), and he has a stated preference for Henry Huggins and Ribsy books as well as the Ramona series. Still is,” Judy Blume, another young adult novel legend, writes in an email. Generations of readers and writers have felt her influence. There is a Beverly Cleary sculpture garden in Portland, along with a Beverly Cleary school, and, of course, a Beverly Cleary dorm at Cal, the school she graduated from in 1938. Cleary’s books have sold 91 million copies since Henry Huggins was published in 1950.
Instead, there are ordinary kids and ordinary families with ordinary triumphs and problems, and somehow, in Beverly Cleary’s quietly masterful hands, this has been enough to build a whole world for young readers. No major crimes get committed and no major natural or manmade disasters occur. There are no celebrities or inside looks into the fabulous world of Manhattan’s elite. Hardcore drug use and teenage pregnancy are not addressed, and no one seems to suffer eating disorders.
There are no zombies, witches, warlocks, or wizards in the world inhabited by Ramona and Beezus Quimby, Ellen Tebbits, Henry Huggins, Henry’s dog Ribsy, or any of the fictional gang on Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon.
You won’t find a vampire in a Beverly Cleary book.
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