Beverly Cleary, Age 100

The first Beverly Cleary book I remember reading, recommended to me by my wise and thoughtful mother, was “Ellen Tebbits.” Mom had read it herself as a girl. It’s about Ellen, an eight-year-old Oregonian who takes ballet lessons and goes to elementary school. Until I reread “Ellen Tebbits” this weekend, some thirty-five years later, I remembered details hazily, but with a particular intensity of feeling: Ellen’s embarrassment about having to wear woolen underwear, and her fear of people noticing it at ballet; a troublemaker named Otis Spofford, who wore spurs on his sneakers; an eraser-clapping scene that had a pivotal role in a friendship; Ellen and her friend having matching homemade dresses with a monkey print and sashes; something terrible about the dresses, or the sashes, that caused a blowup; a scene at ballet in which Ellen discovers that her friend is also wearing horrible woolen underwear, and is embarrassed about it, just like Ellen. Instant kinship, the end of loneliness. I remember thinking very powerfully about friendship as I read this book, with its quietly foreign details, and feeling riveted and moved. I didn’t have that particular kind of friendship, a sashes-and-dresses friendship, but I didn’t need one in order to understand it. (I was more of a Beezus-Ramona hybrid with a few beloved local Henrys.) Rereading “Ellen Tebbits,” I was pleased to be reminded of good details I’d forgotten about, like a dramatic beet-pulling scene and Ellen’s role in a play as a substitute rat. The book’s emotions, however, I’d remembered vividly—they were indelible.