SAN FRANCISCO—As she turns 100, the feisty and witty author Beverly Cleary remembers the Oregon childhood that inspired the likes of characters Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins in the children’s books that sold millions and enthralled generations of youngsters.
“I was a well-behaved little girl, not that I wanted to be,” she said. “At the age of Ramona, in those days, children played outside. We played hopscotch and jump rope and I loved them and always had scraped knees.”
Ramona, perhaps her best-known character, made her debut in “Henry Huggins” with only a brief mention. But that changed soon.
“All the children appeared to be only children so I tossed in a little sister and she didn’t go away. She kept appearing in every book,” she said in a telephone interview from her Carmel, California home. Cleary herself was an only child.
