Thank you Beverly Cleary
Yesterday, I was scrolling through Twitter at the end of the day, like I usually do, and I was faced with a sad news alert that made me gasp. "Oh no, Beverly Cleary died," I announced to the room and everyone looked at me in surprise and sadness. Later I saw a tweet from author Rebecca Makkai that said, "I don't know why I'd gasp at a 104-year-old passing away, but I did." And I felt the same way. I knew Beverly Cleary was in her 100s but something about the news felt surprising. As I saw more and more tributes to the late author pop up online, specifically from the many female authors and journalists I follow, I began to piece together why. Many of us started reading Beverly Cleary as children, so for most of our memories, she's always been a name we knew, a part of our lives. While I can't necessarily recall specific plot points, I have remember listening to her books on tape on long car rides and trying to imagine what it looked like when Ramona comes falling through the attic ceiling in Ramona's World. Beverly Cleary's messy, troublesome and authentic characters took us on mini adventures (and were ahead of their time, when you remember many of these stories were published in the 1950s) and for that we'll always be grateful. Below are some wonderful tributes to her work (some recent, some are a few years old):
