After her graduation from University of Washington in 1939 she served as a children's librarian in Yakima, Washington and then as the post librarian at the U.S. Army Hospital in Oakland, California.
Cleary's first book, Henry Huggins (1950), was accepted for immediate publication and was the first in a series of fictional chapter books about Henry, his dog Ribsy, his neighborhood friend Beezus and her little sister Ramona [REF].