On The Death Of A Significant Author

THE WORLD LOST one of the most significant authors of the 20th century the other day when Beverly Cleary died at 104.  It certainly can't be considered a shock when someone that age dies but it's certainly a loss to the world.

It's kind of wild, being an old man when an author you first read before you were 10 dies, I only read Henry Huggins and Ribsy as a child.  I had to wait to be come a baby-sitting uncle to be introduced to more of her books, the wonderful Romona and Beezus books, the really great Dear Mr. Henshaw (I'll have to go back and read the sequel to that one, Strider, now).  I especially liked that one and Ramona and Her Father.  I liked how Cleary presented the failures and weaknesses of otherwise good adults as much as she did the children she created.  I once heard an interview with her when she said she didn't want to write books about children who learn their lesson and reform, that she didn't like that in the children's books she read as a child.  So she was true to life in that.  Takes more than one book or even a series to make someone reform.

I hope her family are comforted by the knowledge that probably as much as any author she is responsible for doing good things for millions of people at a time they needed it badly.  It makes you wonder how you could ever even come to an understanding of how much good her work could have done, though I can't believe any of her books did anything to make the world a worse place.  Lots of the "great authors" you can't make the same claim for.  And she did it without being sanctimonious and prissy.