This year, pop culture has experienced a lot of loss, starting off with the passing of David Bowie and Alan Rickman in January. It’s easy to dismiss 2016 as being a miserable year even now that we’re in April—it seems a lot like bad things keep happening.

But, good things happen, too. With Beverly Cleary, famous and beloved children’s author, turning 100-years-old on Tuesday, we can celebrate that not everything is terrible all the time. Fellow Odyssey writer Meghan Amaral has an article out this week about books from our childhood that we should revisit as adults, which you should check out—and Cleary’s “Ramona” books are the ones that have made my own personal list.

The literary world has been familiar with Cleary since 1950, when her first book, “Henry Huggins,” was published—and her novels have remained a mainstay when teaching children’s literature since then. I remember being around nine or 10 years old and staying up late to finish reading “Ramona Quimby, Age 8” by the glow of my light night, afraid of being caught but still eager to read. I still have my older sister’s copies of the “Ramona” books, the ones by Cleary that have impacted me—and many other girls—the most over the years. Would I have become such an avid reader as a kid if I hadn’t had the works of writers like Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume (who turned 78 back in February this year) getting me invested in doing so? Maybe, maybe not—but I might not also have realized that women can be famous writers, too.

Most of the literature we’re introduced to in elementary and middle school—the books like “Shiloh” (by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor), “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” (Cleary), “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” (Blume), and “Because of Winn-Dixie” (Kate DiCamillo, who made a tweet wishing Cleary a happy birthday and thanking her for her novels)—are by women. There are plenty by men, too, but it’s impossible to disregard the popularity of these novels regardless of age or gender. This changes as we get older, and we are encouraged to read more Literature from the canon—we’re told to eschew kid lit and YA novels (which, up until the recent popularity of John Green and other male writers, was primarily written, again, by women like Blume and Meg Cabot and subsequently dismissed) and pick up Steinbeck or Hemingway. Not that I dislike Hemingway, but there’s a weird (read: sexist) dichotomy about who we’re supposed to be reading while we get older.

But Beverly Cleary’s work has stuck with me a lot longer than Charles Dickens' has, and not just because I’ve known it for longer. For the most part, they both include themes of growing up, and Ramona can be just as bratty and petty (if not more so) than Pip—but God, it’s so much better to hear about her drawing little cat ears on her cursive uppercase “Q's” because the line on it reminds her of a tail than to think about Pip doing, well, anything. (Admittedly, I don’t remember that much about “Great Expectations,” and it’s mostly because I just didn’t care.) We might laud certain (male) literary greats in the canon, but when it comes to the works that change us, it’s books like those written by Cleary and Blume that really matter to the people who need to get reading in the first place.

I got worried when I saw Beverly Cleary’s name show up as “Trending” because what else has happened when we’ve seen famous figures who have been there throughout most of our lives trending lately? Nothing good—even Harper Lee passed away this year. Instead, it’s good news: she’s alive and well and going to be enjoying carrot cake for her birthday.

So 2016 isn’t a total loss: We’ve still got milestone birthdays, and we’ve still got one of the greats in children’s literature. I think there’s plenty to celebrate.