Children's Literature Quotes - Page 2

• Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

  Dr. Seuss

  Inspirational, Life, Fun

  The Lorax (1971)

  129 Copy quote

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• 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.

  Roald Dahl

  Beauty, Uplifting, Teacher

  Roald Dahl (2007). “James and the Giant Peach”, p.151, Penguin

  94 Copy quote

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• a good deal of childhood is strong stuff for adults and totally unsuitable for children.

  Philippa Pearce

  Strong, Children, Childhood

  8 Copy quote

• Most of the great works of juvenile literature are subversive in one way or another: they express ideas and emotions not generally approved of or even recognized at the time; they make fun of honored figures and piously held beliefs; and they view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness, remarking - as in Andersen's famous tale - that the emperor has no clothes.

  Alison Lurie

  Fun, Views, Ideas

  9 Copy quote

• Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.

  George Carlin

  Faith, Children, Learning

  229 Copy quote

• Children’s literature must build a bridge between the colorful dream world full of fantasy and illusion, and a tougher real world full of twists and turns. The child armed with the torch of knowledge, awareness and guidance must cross this bridge and set foot to the intense harshness of the bigger world.

  Samad Behrangi

  Dream, Children, Real

  16 Copy quote

• I don't think I'm essentially interested in children's books. I'm interested in writing, and in pictures. I'm interested in people and in children because they are people.

  Margaret Wise Brown

  Children, Book, Writing

  11 Copy quote

• If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Children, Book, Writing

  Twitter post from Jun 11, 2012

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• To write for children at all is an act of faith.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Children, Writing, Literature

  4 Copy quote

• A children's writer should, ideally, be a dedicated semi-lunatic, a kind of poet with a marvelous idea, who, preferably, when not committing the marvellous idea to paper, does something else of a quite different kind, so as to acquire new and rich experience.

  Joan Aiken

  Children, Ideas, Doe

  17 Copy quote

• Science Fiction is a branch of children's literature.

  Thomas M. Disch

  Children, Fiction, Literature

  Thomas M. Disch (2005). “On SF”, p.4, University of Michigan Press

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• What I use from my own life is not the facts, it's the emotion. It's how I felt about something. It has nothing to do with facts at all. You can get those anywhere. It's the feelings of childhood that you need to know.

  Judy Delton

  Childhood, Feelings, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• Children's books are looked on as a sideline of literature. A special smile. They are usually thought to be associated with women. I was determined not to have this label of sentimentality put on me so I signed by my intials, hoping people wouldn't bother to wonder if the books were written by a man, woman or kangaroo.

  P. L. Travers

  Children, Book, Men

  20 Copy quote

• Only as we give the children the truth about life can we expect any improvement in it.

  Mabel Robinson

  Children, Giving, Literature

  Mabel Louise Robinson (1922). “Writing for Young People”

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• Humor is the oxygen of children's literature. There's a lot of competition for children's time, but even kids who hate to read want to read a funny book.

  Sid Fleischman

  Children, Hate, Book

  13 Copy quote

• When people ask me what qualifies me to be a writer for children, I say I was once a child. But I was not only a child, I was, better still, a weird little kid, and though I would never choose to give my own children this particular preparation for life, there are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid.

  Katherine Paterson

  Children, Kids, People

  Katherine Paterson (2011). “Read for Your Life #18”, p.2, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Children, Believe, Heart

  18 Copy quote

• Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.

  Dr. Seuss

  Country, Children, Book

  8 Copy quote

• A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.

  Astrid Lindgren

  Children, Book, Healing

  30 Copy quote

• By providing cheap and wholesome reading for the young, we have partly succeeded in driving from the field that which was positively bad; yet nothing is easier than to overdo a reformation, and, through the characteristic indulgence of American parents, children are drugged with a literature whose chief merit is its harmlessness.

  Agnes Repplier

  Children, Reading, Parent

  Agnes Repplier (1888). “Books and Men”

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• A child... who has learned from fairy stories to believe that what at first seemed a repulsive, threatening figure can magically change into a most helpful friend is ready to believe that a strange child whom he meets and fears may also be changed from a menace into a desirable companion.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Children, Believe, Fairy Stories

  Bruno Bettelheim (1976). “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales”, Vintage

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• I loved The Wind in the Willows. ... Walt Disney should be sued for cheapening it as he did. Imagine it, Mickey Mousing all those nice characters. I'm surprised he didn't do it with the New Testament.

  Tasha Tudor

  Movie, Nice, Character

  19 Copy quote

• The only books that work are those which fly through the air - the ones you let happen, not make happen.

  Rosemary Wells

  Book, Air, Literature

  9 Copy quote

• I cannot, will not, withhold from my young readers the harsh realities of human hunger and suffering and loss, but neither will I neglect to plant that stubborn seed of hope that has enabled our race to outlast wars and famines and the destruction of death.

  Katherine Paterson

  War, Loss, Reality

  Katherine Paterson (2012). “Read for Your Life #21”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Books that children read but once are of scant service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.

  Agnes Repplier

  Children, Book, Thinking

  Agnes Repplier (1888). “Books and Men”

  6 Copy quote

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