I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
Beverly ClearyRead
I don't think children themselves have changed that much. It's the world that has changed.
Interpretation
Children remain fundamentally the same, but their environment and the world around them have evolved significantly.
Beverly Cleary's quote reflects the idea that while the intrinsic nature and characteristics of children may stay constant over time, the societal and environmental contexts in which they grow up can dramatically transform. This emphasizes the influence of external factors—such as technology, culture, and societal expectations—on the development and experiences of children, suggesting that understanding them requires an awareness of the changing world they inhabit.
In practice
In a discussion about parenting styles during different generations.
I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.
I know that when I was a children's librarian, that was about 1940, boys particularly asked where were the books about kids like us, and there weren't any at that time.
I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.
Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children. Some of the teachers were just doing their job, but others had that little extra. They really cared about children and they wore pretty dresses.
You can't expect to go about change - especially change of this nature, when you talk about racial equality and justice - you can't expect to go about or engage in that without resistance, and so you're going to have some people who aren't on board.
Legal discrimination between the sexes is, in almost every instance, founded on outmoded views of society and the pre-scientific beliefs about psychology and physiology. It is time to sweep away these relics of the past and set further generations free of them.
A revolution resembles the death of a fading star, an exhilarating Technicolor explosion that gives way not to an ordered new galaxy but to a nebula, a formless cloud of shifting energy.
All beginnings are somewhat strange; but we must have patience, and little by little, we shall find things, which at first were obscure, becoming clearer.
It seems to me that women have made an awful lot of progress, but they probably remain underrepresented at the highest levels of most organizations, for a variety of reasons. And it's probably going to take a long time to change that.
The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.
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