Beverly Cleary, born in 1916, American author, known for writing humorous realistic fiction for children and young adults.

Beverly Atlee Bunn was born in McMinnville, Oregon. She grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Oregon, and later in Portland, Oregon. After graduating in 1938 from the University of California at Berkeley, she obtained a degree in library science in 1939 from the University of Washington and then worked as a children's librarian and as an Army post librarian. She also married and changed her name to Beverly Cleary.

Remembering her childhood frustration at the lack of humorous books about ordinary children, Cleary decided to write a book for young readers about the sort of children with whom she spent her childhood. The result was Henry Huggins (1950), an immediate success and the first of many books about the fictional children who lived on or near Klickitat Street in Portland, including Ellen Tebbits (1951); Otis Spofford (1953), one of the first children's books about a latchkey, single-parent child; and Beezus and Ramona (1955), the first in a series of books about the character Ramona Quimby.

Cleary also wrote a popular series of books about a mouse named Ralph, introduced in The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965), and authored picture books for children and fiction for young adults. Cleary chronicled her childhood in A Girl from Yamhill: A Memoir (1988) and continued into her college years and early adulthood with My Own Two Feet: A Memoir (1995). In 1999 she added to the popular Ramona series with the book Ramona’s World.

Cleary's books are loved by children and recognized by critics for their insight into childhood. Her many awards include the 1984 Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983), about a boy who comes to terms with his parents' divorce by writing letters to his favorite author. Ramona and Her Father (1977) and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (1981) were both named Newbery Honor books. For excellence in her entire body of work, Cleary received the American Library Association's 1975 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award and the 1980 Regina Medal from the Catholic Library Association. Several of Cleary's books have been adapted for motion pictures and television.