Critical Reception
Pat Pflieger, professor of children's literature at West Chester University commented: "Cleary's books have lasted because she understands her audience.She knows they're sometimes confused or frightened by the world around them, and that they feel deeply about things that adults can dismiss." Eliza Dresang, Beverly Cleary Professor in Children and Youth Services at the UW Information School notes: "Those books don't seem so radical now, but they were when she was writing them." She suggests that the areas they cover are portrayed with honesty and accuracy. Twentieth-Century Children's Writers says "Beverly Cleary's impact as a children's writer cannot be overestimated." It goes on to cite "her extraordinary talent in creating memorable young characters whose exuberant spirit and zest for life attract young and old readers alike."
Read more about this topic: Beverly Cleary
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest.... It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)