In the opening chapter of Beverly Cleary’s “Ramona the Pest,” first published in 1968 and still popular today, Ramona Quimby’s teacher reads aloud the Virginia Burton classic “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel” to a rapt group of kindergartners. “As Ramona listened,” Cleary writes, “a question came into her mind, a question that had often puzzled her about the books that were read to her.”

“Miss Binney,” Ramona asked, “I want to know — how did Mike Mulligan go to the bathroom when he was digging the basement of the town hall?”

This question, which wholly captures children’s persistent need to relate what they read to their own lives, and this moment — in all its realism, humor and respect for young children’s minds — encapsulate what makes books by Cleary, who will turn 95 on April 12, so enduringly appealing.

Speaking recently by phone from her home in Carmel, Calif., Cleary complained of a faulty memory, but nonetheless recalled the bathroom question as something one of her own children (she is the mother of twins) asked when she read “Mike Mulligan” to them. “So I gave it to Ramona,” she said.