Wow, I didn't think this would happen but I actually loved My Own Two Feet even more than A Girl From Yamhill! And it's very well titled as Beverly is trying very, very hard through the whole book to get out from under her mother's thumb.The book starts just where Yamhill left off, with Beverly heading off to Southern California to stay with her aunt and attend junior college. Naturally, her mother is sure this will be a disaster but Beverly goes anyway. She has a good time and gets good grades. But her aunt doesn't want her to stay with them again next year. Beverly, much more resourceful than she gives herself credit for, manages to meet a girl in a similar situation and they decide to be roommates and manage to find a reasonable boarding situation. And at the end of two years, Beverly transfers to U-Cal (aka Berkeley) where she finagles her way into the only co-op dorm for women near campus. She sits for the dreaded English Comprehensives and goes off to attend graduate school in library science. Meanwhile she makes friends, dates boys, attends classes, and occasionally deals with her incredibly negative mother.Silly me, each time she met a new boy I'd think "is this the one?" not thinking that "the one" would be the guy with the last name Cleary (duh! I had trouble throughout both books remembering that her last name was Bunn.) When she and Clarence finally meet and start dating, it's not head over heels instantly for either one, and instead they date for a long time, getting to know each to her quite well. Her mother hates him immediately (truly she would have hated anyone Beverly loved I think) because he was Catholic (they are Protestant). But as we know will happen they marry anyway.War breaks out and Beverly works at a library on an army base and later in one at a hospital. She also works in a bookstore over many Christmases and always makes the best of things. Finally, after the war when she no longer needs to work for the army (never her favorite), she decides to finally write the children's book she has known she was going to write since she was a child herself. And she thinks of a boy who finds a dog, and a story she heard on base about a family who had to get a box from a grocery store during a rainstorm because that was the only way they could bring their dog home on the streetcar. And Henry Huggins is born (and Ribsy!) We end the book with her thinking about a nice girl named Ellen whose woolen underwear is very inconvenient in ballet class (Ellen Tebbits is my favorite of all Beverly Cleary's books!I adored this book. Beverly is such a wonderful young woman, I think I would have liked to be friends with her. She makes the best of situations (probably as a result of growing up during the Depression, which could have made her depressed and always thinking about what might have been, like her mother, but it does not), and she gets through every problem through hard work, creativity, and determination. Everything does not go her way (see: the dreaded English comps) like for everyone, and yet she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. We don't see the success - only the years of hard work and deprivations and bullying by her mother who could have given Joan Crawford lessons in emotional abuse. She's just on the cusp of succeeding despite poor odds when we leave her, secure in the knowledge that everything will work out. Beverly would make a fantastic role model for any young girl with dreams and goals, and I now feel more warmly towards her than ever. I feel I need to reread many more of her books and perhaps I will in 2012. I highly, highly recommend this book.
I love every bit of this. The college parts, especially the Stebbins Hall details, are so wonderful that I once took a pilgrimage to Cal/UC Berkeley and could barely contain myself when a friendly undergrad asked me if I wanted a tour of Stebbins.And it gets even better once Beverly becomes...a librarian! I first read this shortly after being accepted to library school and, many years and several re-reads later, find that Beverly's pride in her profession shines through. Her line about librarians being haunted by unanswered reference questions? Yup. And although she's modest about it, the fact that Beverly remembers the details of her reference desk successes shows what a pro she was. Her Army hospital library gig continues to fascinate me. Even reading about all the military bureaucracy doesn't stop me from thinking that the job sounds like SO MUCH FUN. It's troubling to see how Beverly's mother tries vainly to keep Beverly in her clutches, and it's even harder to read about her father's reaction to her marriage. Still, I don't know who could have written about those experiences with such a blend of honesty, tact, and consideration.That final chapter with the beginning of her writing career is just like her novels, with all that's come before leading to a quiet crescendo. I need a Goodreads shelf for favorite literary meals. Here it's her Depression-era grad school "meager" lunch from the UW Domestic Science Department, "...where I drank a carton of milk and ate a sandwich cut into three parts, each with a different filling. I came to like the peanut butter and banana on raisin bread section and saved it for dessert."Last read: May, 2003
What do You think about My Own Two Feet (1996)?
Started this book, really enjoying it, then realized...why would a children's author start writing recounting her life from age 18? Right. There's another book out there somewhere about her childhood. I liked reading this. It's very charming and well done. She's the reason I started writing at age 7. My only disappointment is that she doesn't spend very much time talking about writing. (One reason is that she didn't write until she was married, settled, etc.) The book ends just as she's cashing her first (lil) advance check. I wish there was another memoir *after* this one.
—Lori Rader-Day
I am a big fan of children’s literature and have always love Beverly Cleary’s books from the time I was a young child, so it was fun to read about her life and how it came about that she wrote children’s books and where she found many of her ideas for her stories. An added dimension was the fact that she was working to educate herself during the depression and with the added burden of a mother who wasn’t exactly supportive of her efforts in education or her social life.Funny enough I was reading this at the same time as reading Roald Dahl’s autobiography (actually both of them wrote 2 autobiographies each, one of their childhoods and one of their young adulthoods), another children’s literature author and who lived during the same time as Beverly Cleary. It was interesting to read how each of them experienced the same time frame but from two different parts of the world. Both authors and all 4 books were wonderfully written and very engaging. I highly recommend them all!
—Heidi Hertzog
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.
—Elizabeth Quinn
