Children's Books Quotes

I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it.

I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.

Children's books have great potential to reveal new possibilities to readers, because the intended audience is at an age of genuine learning.

To me one of the most important things is launching a children's book division.

The children's book world has given me wonderful friendships and an unbelievably rich life.

A friend suggested that I get a job at a children's book store so I could meet kids and read books, and that turned out to be the single best bit of advice I've ever gotten.

I've never written a children's book, but when people meet me for the first time and I say I write books, they invariably reply, 'Children's books?' Maybe it's something about my face.

Many, if not most, of the best and most lasting children’s books have multiple levels, some of which are not fully accessible to their most likely readers…at least, not on their first read-through at age eight or ten or fifteen.

We be of one blood, ye and I

Librarians lend people books from the library. The best librarians are children's book librarians.

The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children's books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted exactly the same but completely different. I'd much rather just do something completely different even if there's a risk of it going wrong.

...She Let Him Just Sit There and Be Happy.

I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I know I can.

The best children's book writers are not people who have kids, but people who write from the child within themselves.

There is no place like home.

I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.

You must never feel badly about making mistakes.

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

[My mom] had always wanted to write a children's book. She was a children's librarian and an elementary school teacher, so of course she loves children and children's literature.

We all can dance when we find music that we love.

I am frustrated by celebrities who decide to write children's books because they think it's easy. That drives me crazy. It's frustrating because it's unfair to children. Because they'll get a lot of attention, they'll get a lot of marketing budget and so on just because they're a celebrity - the Madonnas, the Ricky Gervaises, the Russell Brands.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all.

Back in my days as a children's book editor, my superiors caught on to the fact that teenagers were using the Internet to gossip about each other, and thought it might be nifty to develop a series of books about an anonymous high-school blogger who gossips about her classmates. The concept was passed on to me.

Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

I think the Harry books are actually very moral, but some people just object to witchcraft being mentioned in a children's book.

You can't blend in when you were born to stand out.

You've got to give kids really beautiful children's books in order to turn them into revolutionaries. Because if they see these beautiful things when they're young, when they grow up they'll see the real world and say, 'Why is the world so ugly?! I remember when the world was beautiful.' And then they'll fight, and they'll have a revolution. They'll fight against all of our corruption in the world, they'll fight to try to make the world more beautiful. That's the job of a good children's book illustrator.

I thought ["Summer Sisters" ] would be a children's book - two girls who summer together from very different backgrounds. And then when it just kept going and going and going. They kept getting older.

I have a children's book already out and my autobiography.

What should a good children’s book be like? If you ask me, I can tell you after thinking long and hard: It must be good.

I am an author-illustrator of children's books - and yet - I must confess I don't do the books for the kids. When I'm working on a book I'm somewhere else - at the circus - or a rustic old farm - or deep in a forest - with no thought of who might read the book or what age group it would appeal to. I write them so I can illustrate them.

Russell Brand has announced that he plans to write a series of children's books. First up: 'Horton Hears a Heroin Dealer.'

I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.

I have always believed in the magic of childhood and think that if you get your life right that magic should never end. I feel that if adults cannot enjoy a children’s book properly there is something wrong with either the book or the adult reading it. This of course, is just a smart way of saying I don't want to grow up.

If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be.

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret... All the best people are!

You make learning fun. Like a children’s book or after school special. Tell me about your…um, Athenian women.

Many adults feel that every children's book has to teach them something.... My theory is a children's book... can be just for fun.

To tell the truth, I don't read children's books. I'm an adult. I just write them.

Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.

Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

A person's a person, no matter how small.

I started reading Dickens when I was about 12, and I particularly liked all of the orphan books. I always liked books about young people who are left on their own with the world, and the four children's books I've written feature that very thing: children that are abandoned by their families or running away from their families or ignored by their families and having to grow up quicker than they should, like David Copperfield - having to be the hero of their own story.