Beverly Cleary was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction. She was one of America's most successful authors, with 91 million copies of her books sold worldwide since her first book was published in 1950. Some of her best known characters are Ramona Quimby and Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, and Ralph S. Mouse. Cleary was born in 1916 in McMinnville, Oregon and passed away in 2021 in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California at the age of 104.