Cari Meisters' book Beverly Cleary is a biography of Beverly Cleary, the famous writer of children's book. The book begins by telling where she came from and where she grew up. It tells about the struggles that her family faced during World War II and how they had to sell their family farm to make ends meet. The book goes on to tell where Beverly Cleary went to college and shows pictures of her graduating. Beverly Cleary finally gets a job as a librian and eventually starts to write children's books. Her first book that she writes is Henry Huggins which was published in 1950 by William Morrow and Company. While she loved to write she also wanted to have a family so she had twin boys in 1955. Beverly Cleary became a very well known and loved children book author. In 1995 her hometown Portland, Oregon opened the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden for children in her honor.

I really liked this book because it was short but told the story of a great writer. It talked about her struggles as she was growing up but showed that if you put your mind to something you can accomplish it. I like that the book had pictures of her through out her life. The biography was a well written one.

Some extension ideas you can do with this biography are one find other books that Beverly Cleary has wrote and discuss them in class. Another extension idea is to draw a timeline of her life based on the book and talk about the events that happened in this time frame such as World War II or the Great Depression.