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Beverly Cleary doesn’t really want to talk about turning 100. “Go ahead and fuss,” she says of the big day, April 12. “Everyone else is.”

Across the country, people are delving into Cleary nostalgia, with celebrations and new editions of her books with introductions by the likes of Amy Poehler and Judy Blume. Kids and adults are being asked to “Drop Everything and Read” to commemorate Cleary’s contribution to children’s literature.

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But the beloved children’s author has something far more low-key in mind for herself: a celebratory slice of carrot cake, she says, “because I like it.”

Cleary is as feisty and direct as her famously spirited character Ramona Quimby — an observation that she hears often and doesn’t care for. “I thought like Ramona,” she says in a phone interview, “but I was a very well-behaved little girl.”

Today, Cleary lives a quiet, well-behaved life in a retirement home in northern California. She gets up at 7:30 a.m. and spends the day reading the newspaper and books (on her night stand when we talked in mid-March: Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight) and doing crossword puzzles. She watches Doc Martin and CNN and enjoys visits with her family. She doesn’t have a computer, and though she enjoys writing letters, she notes dryly that “when you get to be 99, there aren’t many people to write letters to.”