Dec 232013
 

Read in December 2013

My Own Two Feet, by Beverly Cleary

Three stars

When I was a new reader just beginning chapter books, Beverly Cleary was just about my favorite author, and her book, Ellen Tebbits, remains one of my favorites. I read the memoir of her life up to her high school graduation, A Girl from Yamhill, a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, although for some unknown reason I didn’t write a review at the time. My Own Two Feet picks up the story when Cleary moved to southern California to attend junior college and takes her up to the sale of her first novel, Henry Huggins. Many of the themes of the first memoir continue here, including the hardship of the Depression, the difficult relationship with her mother, and the challenges of school. Cleary’s prose is straightforward and unemotional, which may put off some readers, but the book is aimed at ‘tweens. For that reason, Cleary’s social and educational insecurities, which seemed like so much piffle to an adult reader well aware of her phenomenal later success, are a really important aspect the book. After all, that’s why Ellen Tebbits was so important to me. For me, the most interesting parts of this memoir are those which depict the author-to-be figuring out what kind of stories she wants to tell and for whom. The fact that 91 million copies later, her novels continue to sell shows that she got the answers to those questions absolutely right.