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What inspired
you to create the character of Ramona?
Well, she was really an accidental character. When I was writing
Henry Huggins, it occurred to me that all the children appeared
to be only children. I thought I should put somebody else in,
so I was starting to put in a little sister and someone called
out to a neighbor who was named Ramona, so I just called Beezus’s
little sister Ramona. She has continued to grow in the books,
somewhat to my surprise. I hadn’t really intended to write so
much about her, but there she was. She kept hanging around, and
I kept having Ramona ideas.
How do you approach
the writing of a Ramona book?
Oh, very messily. I usually start with a couple of ideas, not
necessarily at the beginning of the book, and I just write. Sometimes
I have to go back and figure out how a character got to a particular
point. In Ramona and Her Father, I wrote the part about the sheep
costume last. Actually, I was asked to write a Christmas story
about Ramona for one of the women’s magazines. I did this, and
called it “Ramona and the Three Wise Persons.” But in writing
this story, I was thinking how Ramona got to the point where she
was wearing a sheep costume made from old pajamas. So after that
story was published, I wrote how she got to that point. So in
this case, I wrote the last chapter first.
Of course this is against everything people are taught about
writing, but I don’t believe that outlining works for fiction
because if you have it all worked out, it becomes boring. So I
just write. I really enjoy revising more than writing. I love
to cross things out and cut a page down to one paragraph.
I think sometimes beginning writers are so impressed with what
they have written that they can’t really judge it. I know I wouldn’t
want to see anything published as I wrote it initially because
it changes so much in the writing. I revise until a little light
bulb clicks off and I know it’s done. I just know when it feels
right. My first editor told me I was an intuitive writer. I hadn’t
really thought about myself that way, but I guess she was right.
Were you taught
creative writing in school?
Oh no, goodness no. I didn’t have anything like creative writing
until I was in the eighth grade, when the Portland School System
changed to the platoon system, and we had some younger teachers
who were more creative than those I’d had before. I’m surprised
sometimes that I’ve written anything. We were always supposed
to produce things exactly the same, but these younger teachers
encouraged creativity. And the school librarian took a special
interest in me. She encouraged me by saying that someday I should
write for children. It seemed like a good idea.
We had a class called auditorium in which we put on plays or
got up and gave current events. I wrote a play about Sacajawea
for this class. We had to stand on the stage and whisper so the
teacher could hear us in the back of the auditorium. I wish children
today had a class like this. As I listen to my grandchildren in
their school programs, I notice children don’t speak properly—they
drop the ends of their sentences.
There is a 13-year
gap between the time you wrote Beezus and Ramona and its first
sequel, Ramona the Pest. What made you decide to revisit Ramona?
Oh, I kept thinking about her. She was around in Ribsy and in
several of the other books about Henry Huggins and his friends,
and my editor had wanted me to write a book about her for years.
But Ramona would be in kindergarten, and I hadn’t gone to kindergarten
and didn’t know anything about kindergarten. But as the years
passed, I had twins who went to kindergarten. Twins are a great
advantage because they compare notes at the dinner table. I learned
a lot about kindergarten that year and felt I had enough knowledge
to write about it. Now the moment was right, so I did it.
You
gracefully leap from the fifties to the sixties time period without
skipping a beat in Ramona’s life. Did you make conscious decisions
to help you accomplish this stylistic feat?
No, I don’t really think of my stories
as taking place in any particular time. However, they do take
place in a real neighborhood in which I grew up and which I still
visit. It’s really a remarkable neighborhood. It’s changed very
little since I lived there. It’s a very stable place, and I often
think about it. I think part of it was that when the houses were
built, there was lots of lumber in Oregon, and they’re very well
built houses. They’re not anything lavish; they’re just solid
houses. It’s what the real estate people call a pride-of-ownership
neighborhood. I think about this place as I write, but the children
in my stories now wear pants if they want to—that wouldn’t have
been permitted in my day—but those are minor things.
Ramona has been
artistically rendered in various art or media forms, including
drawing, sculpture, dramatic presentations, and television productions.
How do you think Ramona translates into these other media?
Well, when I agreed to the scripts of
the little theater productions, I had not realized that they would
ever use adults to perform the parts of children. That dismays
me because the theater that did this originally used children.
It was a children’s theater, and I thought this would be for children’s
theaters in which children acted. I’m really a little surprised
to see Ramona being a small adult. I’ve only seen productions
done in Portland, so I don’t really know how they turn out elsewhere.
There was a production put on recently in New York, and someone
sent me a review which was very favorable, but I don’t really
know if they were children acting in this production or not.
Now about the artwork in the books—when
Louis Darling died, it was very had to find somebody to take his
place. But I’m very happy with Alan Tiegreen, and I finally have
said let’s have one artist do all my covers. So I think that’s
the way it’s going to be from now on. The publishers consult me
on every little detail, and I don’t know that I’m always the best
judge, but they do ask.
I won’t let go of the rights for television
productions unless I have script approval. There have been companies
that have wanted the movie rights to Ramona, but they won’t let
me have script approval, and so I say no. I did have script approval
for the television productions of the Ramona series, which was
done by an educational film company. I did a lot of rewriting
on the scripts, and I think they turned out as well as can be
expected when you consider all the problems involved. They ran
out of money and so the whole thing had to be moved to Canada.
Fortunately, Cecilie Truit and the director from Lancet Media
went there and stayed with the whole production. I thought Sarah
Polley was a good little actress, a real little professional.
She has recently been singled out for praise due to her performance
in the movie The Sweet Hereafter.
Would you please
tell us a little about the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden for
Children erected in Portland, Oregon’s Grant Park?
Oh, well, I was very honored and pleased
and very touched at how hard they worked to raise the money. School
children would bring coffee cans full of pennies and nickels.
It was great fun to go up for the dedication. People tell me that
there is lots of daily activity around it. People sit and look
at it. Dogs come and look at Ribsy; they get their hackles up,
and then they approach his figure.
There was a competition for the selection
of the artist. I was asked to choose the winner, and I chose Lee
Hunt. She loves the stories and her proposal was quite conscientious.
She looked up children’s clothing from the 1950s and tried to
select things that wouldn’t date. She went out and photographed
the site and did a lot of things that showed she was truly interested.
She worked very hard, and I think she captured the characters
quite well as sculptures. She also has some Ramona sculptures
in the St. Paul Library Children’s Room in Minneapolis, I believe,
and some of her Ramona busts are in the public library in Gresham,
Oregon. She has been able to capture Ramona’s different expressions.
In one of them, Ramona is just mad. In another she is smiling.
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