We should all be still thinking about story when we’re her age.
Beverly Cleary’s childhood memoir, A Girl From Yamhill, opens with her earliest memory: a day that her mother dragged her by the hand through the streets while church bells rang, telling then-2-year-old Beverly that she must “never, never forget this day.” Vanishingly few people on earth still remember the day that World War I ended, but Cleary, who turns 103 on Friday, is one of them. She is famous for her children’s books, and probably most famous for the protagonist of many of them, Ramona Quimby, an irrepressible little girl who hates arbitrary rules and condescension from grown-ups.
Beverly Cleary and her famous heroine