American children's book ____(1)_____ Beverly Cleary, who responded to a young reader's plea for realistic characters by bringing rare insight and humour to the lives of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins and the other children who _____(2)_____ her more than 40 books, has died at age 104, publisher HarperCollins said.

Cleary died on Thursday at her home in Carmel, California, where she had lived since the 1960s, a statement from HarperCollins said. No _____(3)_____ of death was given.

The author said she had aspirations of writing as a sixth-grader but first became a librarian. At a _____(4)_____ in Yakima, Washington, a young boy provided the impetus for her writing career when he asked Cleary where he could find books about "kids like us."

Cleary decided she wanted to write about ordinary "grubby kids," she told the Los Angeles Times, rather than the English schoolboys and girls who seemed to dominate the plots of children's _____(5)_____ at the time.