CCBC-Net Archives
Beverly Cleary
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Seo, Ginee <Ginee.Seo>
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 15:21:33 -0400
I've been having trouble posting my message too, but Walter has inspired me to try again. I too am a Henry fan. Ramona never captivated me the way she did others; perhaps because I was the oldest child in my family, I found myself responding to Ramona with more annoyance than empathy.
I owe my entire reading career (and probably my present career) to Beverly Cleary and Henry Huggins. I used to hate reading. This was because my school started us on terrible beginner readers that contained such deathly prose as
"Go, Timmy, go! Go go go! Run, Anne, run! Run run run." You can see why I was the worst reader in my first-grade class. In the second grade, we moved up to textbooks. The first story we read was about a boy named Henry who found a funny-looking skinny dog, put him in a cardboard box, and brought him home. I was hooked. We only had that one chapter in our reader, but I HAD to find out more about this kid and his dog. I found the book in our local library, and finished the book in record time. And then I went back and got another. And another. And another....Almost overnight I went from being a bored, reluctant reader to a glasses-wearing bookworm and proud guppy owner (although my fish, much to my disappointment, never reproduced as spectacularly as Henry's). Now I'm an editor, and I work at the company that publishes those same books. The other day I opened my copy of HENRY HUGGINS and got that same second-grade thrill. And I'm hooked all over again--I must re-read them all!
Ginee Seo HarperCollins Children's Books
~~~~~~~~~~ To remove your address from the mailing list, send a message with the header...
To: listserv at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
Subject: signoff ccbc-net
Message----From: WMMayes at aol.com [mailto:WMMayes at aol.com] Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 2:53 PM To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: Re: Beverly Cleary
Please forgive if this shows up more than once--I keep getting it bounced back to me.
Amidst all this reverie for Ramona, let me put in a word for Henry Huggins:
I moved to a new town and a new school in March of my eighth grade year. This was the tenth school I had attended, and the first in California, and I
was not in the best of moods. Friends were neigh unto impossible to come by, and I knew we wouldn't be living in this place for long, so there was no incentive to try. My classes didn't directly correspond with the classes I was taking in my old school, so one period a day I was assigned to the library. I had read a lot of the books there, but had, for some reason, never encountered Cleary. (This is in 1971)
I read the books "in order," being a compulsive child, and was smitten with Henry, and especially Ribsy, from my first introduction to them. Beezus was
a friendly rival and Ramona a minor character who annoyed me greatly, but, oh how I adored Henry Huggins. I admired his tenacity, his clear vision of right and wrong, his work ethic, his relationship with his parents, and, most of all, his love of his impossible dog. That fabulous, normal, solid neighborhood of Klickitat Street was better than Homer Price's Centerburg, better than wherever it was that Danny Dunn went to school (memory fails me), even better than the magical world Edward Eager concocted for Jane, Mark, Katherine, and Martha. I wanted to live there, and I wanted to be Henry's friend.
Thanks to Beverly Cleary, I was. Years later, as the sales rep for her publisher in the area in which she lived, I had the delight of meeting Mrs. Cleary and escorting her to events where she was met by adoring children, each and every one a Ramona fan. Though I have come to appreciate (and even
love) Ramona, my heart belongs to Henry and his dog, and I was able to tell their creator so, an event that brought me no small joy.
Today, in my travels, I speak to thousands of children about their favorite books and writers. Mrs. Cleary's name is right up at the top of the list, as it has been for years. Some things never change, thank goodness!
Walter M. Mayes a.k.a. Walter the Giant Storyteller WMMayes at aol.com
"Love, Food, Clothing, Shelter...Books!"
~~~~~~~~~~ To remove your address from the mailing list, send a message with the header...
To: listserv at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
Subject: signoff ccbc-net
Received on Mon 07 Aug 2000 02:21:33 PM CDT
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 15:21:33 -0400
I've been having trouble posting my message too, but Walter has inspired me to try again. I too am a Henry fan. Ramona never captivated me the way she did others; perhaps because I was the oldest child in my family, I found myself responding to Ramona with more annoyance than empathy.
I owe my entire reading career (and probably my present career) to Beverly Cleary and Henry Huggins. I used to hate reading. This was because my school started us on terrible beginner readers that contained such deathly prose as
"Go, Timmy, go! Go go go! Run, Anne, run! Run run run." You can see why I was the worst reader in my first-grade class. In the second grade, we moved up to textbooks. The first story we read was about a boy named Henry who found a funny-looking skinny dog, put him in a cardboard box, and brought him home. I was hooked. We only had that one chapter in our reader, but I HAD to find out more about this kid and his dog. I found the book in our local library, and finished the book in record time. And then I went back and got another. And another. And another....Almost overnight I went from being a bored, reluctant reader to a glasses-wearing bookworm and proud guppy owner (although my fish, much to my disappointment, never reproduced as spectacularly as Henry's). Now I'm an editor, and I work at the company that publishes those same books. The other day I opened my copy of HENRY HUGGINS and got that same second-grade thrill. And I'm hooked all over again--I must re-read them all!
Ginee Seo HarperCollins Children's Books
~~~~~~~~~~ To remove your address from the mailing list, send a message with the header...
To: listserv at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
Subject: signoff ccbc-net
Message----From: WMMayes at aol.com [mailto:WMMayes at aol.com] Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 2:53 PM To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: Re: Beverly Cleary
Please forgive if this shows up more than once--I keep getting it bounced back to me.
Amidst all this reverie for Ramona, let me put in a word for Henry Huggins:
I moved to a new town and a new school in March of my eighth grade year. This was the tenth school I had attended, and the first in California, and I
was not in the best of moods. Friends were neigh unto impossible to come by, and I knew we wouldn't be living in this place for long, so there was no incentive to try. My classes didn't directly correspond with the classes I was taking in my old school, so one period a day I was assigned to the library. I had read a lot of the books there, but had, for some reason, never encountered Cleary. (This is in 1971)
I read the books "in order," being a compulsive child, and was smitten with Henry, and especially Ribsy, from my first introduction to them. Beezus was
a friendly rival and Ramona a minor character who annoyed me greatly, but, oh how I adored Henry Huggins. I admired his tenacity, his clear vision of right and wrong, his work ethic, his relationship with his parents, and, most of all, his love of his impossible dog. That fabulous, normal, solid neighborhood of Klickitat Street was better than Homer Price's Centerburg, better than wherever it was that Danny Dunn went to school (memory fails me), even better than the magical world Edward Eager concocted for Jane, Mark, Katherine, and Martha. I wanted to live there, and I wanted to be Henry's friend.
Thanks to Beverly Cleary, I was. Years later, as the sales rep for her publisher in the area in which she lived, I had the delight of meeting Mrs. Cleary and escorting her to events where she was met by adoring children, each and every one a Ramona fan. Though I have come to appreciate (and even
love) Ramona, my heart belongs to Henry and his dog, and I was able to tell their creator so, an event that brought me no small joy.
Today, in my travels, I speak to thousands of children about their favorite books and writers. Mrs. Cleary's name is right up at the top of the list, as it has been for years. Some things never change, thank goodness!
Walter M. Mayes a.k.a. Walter the Giant Storyteller WMMayes at aol.com
"Love, Food, Clothing, Shelter...Books!"
~~~~~~~~~~ To remove your address from the mailing list, send a message with the header...
To: listserv at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
Subject: signoff ccbc-net
Received on Mon 07 Aug 2000 02:21:33 PM CDT
