Literary Birthday – 7 August – Betsy Byars

Betsy Byars, was born on 7 August 1928 and died on 26 February 2020.

Betsy Byars Quotes

1. When I type a title page, I hold it and I look at it and I think, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I’ll have a book.
2. Writing is like anything – baseball playing, piano playing, sewing, hammering nails. The more you work on it, the better you get. But it seems to take a longer time to get better at writing than hammering nails.
3. For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.
4. I think how you look is the most important thing in the world. If you look cute, you are cute; if you look smart, you are smart, and if you don’t look like anything, you aren’t anything.
5. I love writing. I’ve pursued it with a passion.
6. I decided not to do sequels. I know that children enjoy them, but I valued the feeling that this was the only time I would write about these characters. I felt it gave me an added incentive to do my best by them, to tell readers everything I knew, to hold nothing back.

Betsy Byars was an American author of children’s books. Her first novel, Clementine, was published in 1962. Her novel Summer of the Swans won the Newbery Medal. She also received a National Book Award for The Night Swimmers and an Edgar Award for Wanted … Mud Blossom.

Source for image: Press image http://www.betsybyars.com/index.html

by Amanda Patterson
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