Beverly Cleary

English 240 - Contemporary Children's Literature
Fall 1999

Beverly Cleary

LIFE
      Beverly Bunn was born on an Oregon farm in 1916, but the family subsequently moved to Portland, where she grew up, experiencing the Depression during her teenage years. Although she loved reading, she was initially assigned to the poor-readers’ group when she began attending school; a part of the problem, Jim Trelease writes, was that she found the classroom reading matter “so dreadfully dull.” She was influenced to read again when she encountered a series of books about twins from different countries that actually had a story.
She moved to California to attend college and met her future husband while attending the University of California at Berkeley. She then returned north, studying to be a librarian at the University of Washington, before being married in 1940.
        While working as a librarian and earlier in her life, Cleary had wondered at why so many children’s books presented a child’s life differently from the way she experienced it. She wanted books that spoke about ordinary children’s lives, and in 1950 wrote and published Henry Huggins, an attempt to do just that; the book was a success and started her on a writing career that has led to more than 30 books in the past half century.
        Best known of her works are the Ramona series, which follow the everyday adventures of a little girl first introduced as a minor character in a book about Henry Huggins, and a set of three fantasies about an intelligent, talking mouse. She received the Newbery award in 1984 for Dear Mr. Henshaw, a novel told through letters and diary entries by a sixth-grade boy, Leigh Botts, who uses writing to deal with the pain of his broken home.
        FOR AN EXCERPT from Cleary's latest book, Ramona's World, click here.

Muggie Maggie

One critic (Pat Pflieger) has written of Cleary’s work that she “emphasizes the humor of exaggerated situations arising naturally from daily life” (58). In Muggie Maggie, what is exaggerated about the situation? What is natural? From where does the humor come?

Maggie enjoys arguing just for the sake of argument, and is easily stimulated to feel contrary (8). She is stubborn. “Letting her parents know she had changed her mind would make Maggie feel ashamed, like admitting she had been wrong” (59).
Maggie worries about how others will think – what if they think “gifted and talented” Maggie is incapable of cursive? (31)
Maggie’s inability to read cursive piques her curiosity and her intense desire to know what the teachers are writing about her causes her to learn.
Maggie thinks the principal misunderstands because he compliments Mrs. Leeper on her teaching, rather than recognizing that “Maggie had done all the work, and now her teacher was getting all the credit” (66). But isn’t this humor that appeals to adults, who recognize what is going on? Would it work for the child audience?

Note the dedication of this book:

“To a third-grade girl who wondered why no one ever wrote a book to help third graders read cursive writing.”

Does this dedication make sense in terms of the book that follows? How does Muggie Maggie help one to learn to read cursive? Is the primary purpose of this book then didactic, i.e., to teach? What, if anything, lifts it beyond simple didacticism – i.e., what makes it an entertaining story?

Look at the chapter headings – each one written in cursive on lined paper. The story also integrates the teaching of cursive into its plot line, reproducing the practice of stroke lines and letters that is part of this process.

Lots of samples of handwriting, of different styles, makes the variety of actual cursive more accessible than the formal, perfect models of writing instruction.

Elements in Maggie’s dislike of cursive:

The fourth-grade boys have told her that writing cursive is difficult, and the teacher is mean (2). Discuss the importance of the relationship between teacher and child in Cleary’s writing generally and in life. (“Maggie was doubtful about a teacher who forecast happiness. . .” [3])
Her father’s secretary has exceptional skills in this area. Is Maggie afraid of the comparison? (6)
“Maggie felt grown-up when she wrote thank-you notes on their home computer.” (7) Does Maggie feel the computer is a substitute for more "old-fashioned” types of writing? How might this relate to contemporary children?
Maggie becomes bored by the repetitive nature of the lessons (15); she would perhaps do better with a different approach. She is curious and examines cursive wherever she finds it (18). She makes the common-sense discovery that adults’ writing does not conform to the models she is learning in school.
Maggie does clearly know what she is supposed to do, as she shows when she tells her father he is doing it wrong (20). However, when she tries to “write like a grown-up” (22), it results in her parents being called to the office.

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