Children’s book author Beverly Cleary, 95, looks back at Ramona

Asked which is her favorite character, the 95-year-old doesn’t hesitate. ‘Well, it must be Ramona,’ she says in a low, matter-of-fact voice. ‘She was just a little brat in ‘Henry Huggins.’ She was sort of an accident because it occurred to me that all the children appeared to be only children. So I tossed in this little sister, and at that moment, a neighbor called out to another neighbor who happened to be named Ramona. So I just named this little girl Ramona. And she kept growing in the Henry books. And my editor said she would like a whole book about Ramona, and I was thinking about it myself.’ There’s a sense of both serendipity and tenacity to such an anecdote, two qualities that define Cleary as well. For many years, she has been an icon — not just of children’s literature but also of American literature, the writer who changed everything with the publication of ‘Henry Huggins,’ her first novel for middle readers, in 1950. In the decades since, she has been a Newbery Medal and Honor winner; she’s a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and has been declared a living legend by the Library of Congress.