Children S Literature Quotes

Nice try, mister, but being cute won't save you. ~ C.J. Milbrandt

For I need not remind such an audience as this that the neat sorting out of books into age-groups, so dear to publishers, has only a very sketchy relation with the habits of any real readers. Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table. ~ C.S. Lewis

Today was a rainy, dreary, wear-your-steel-toed-mud-shoes Wednesday. ~ Greg Pincus

Themes that are "too large for adult fiction can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book" - Philip Pullman
(Hunt and Lenz, 2001, p. 122 as cited by Hunt, 2005, p. 204) ~ Philip Pullman

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

Connor had become a doctor just two days ago - along with all of his friends. They were hand-selected at just three years old to undergo intensive medical training as part of a controversial experiment, called Kid Docs. In the past few years, the Kid Docs program had produced some of the best doctors in the entire country, if not the world. They had some of the lowest complication rates and the highest success rates, and they had developed innovative new procedures that saved lives that were previously unsalvageable. Connor hoped that he would be among the best doctors in the world someday. But right now, he was focused on only a single thing: saving this one man's life. ~ J.W. Lynne

Let your boys test their wings. They may not be eagles, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't soar free. ~ C.J. Milbrandt

I am Captain James Hook! I am no victim; I create them! I do not have bad dreams; I inspire them! ~ Heidi Schulz

The great subversive works of children's literature suggest that there are other views of human life besides those of the shopping mall and the corporation. They mock current assumptions and express the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the world in its simplest and purest form. They appeal to the imaginative, questioning, rebellious child within all of us, renew our instinctive energy, and act as a force for change. This is why such literature is worthy of our attention and will endure long after more conventional tales have been forgotten. ~ Alison Lurie

Mom calls me Patch-a-roo and Patch-a-roo-ny. She usually croons these names to me or crows them as if she's imitating the rooster. I know this is a little odd, but I'm a really special dog. Of course, sometimes she calls me Stink-a-roo. ~ Lea Beall

If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don't have to say anything. Be friendly and then go do
your best. That will make you special, too! ~ Jeff Hutchins

Every day, our kids are faced with obstacles in their way. As parents we need to teach them how to get up and Keep Going. ~ Mayra A. Diaz

Mark my trail... ~ Rudyard Kipling

It was all beginning to run together in the back of Eleanor's mind, and the things that had probably really happened were confused with the things that probably hadn't. And every day everything in her whole past life - the real things and the imaginary things - was being pushed farther and farther back, because going to high school was so enormous, so vast! so different from all of Eleanor's life before. The milling crowds in the hall between classes, all those jostling elbows and swollen shoulders and bosoms, all those enormous hands and feet, they pushed and thumped and shoved at Eleanor's childhood, until there was no room anymore for anything but now, right now, a hurrying rushing now that was just incredibly thrilling, or absolutely rotten and just disgusting, this heaving present moment, right now. ~ Jane Langton

Greet your brother with warmth
And sincerity
Protect your sister and honour your mother
For she bore you in pain
And made you who you are

KhoiSan Book of Wisdom ~ Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

Children see beauty in everything. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Ganix didn't need to make friends. Everyone was a friend! ~ C.J. Milbrandt

I'm planting a tree to remind me to be open and kindhearted. ~ Andrea Koehle Jones

If you haven't walked in someone else's shoes, it's difficult to know the fit, so be kind and compassionate. ~ Heather Wolf

As far as I can tell, it doesn't make any difference to adults how clever children are. They always stick together. Unless you are sick or dying or mortally wounded, they will always side with the other adult. ~ R.L. LaFevers

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
[Kung Fu Monkey
Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009] ~ John Rogers

Your name isn't Sniffles?" Ewan pretended to be surprised. ~ C.J. Milbrandt

My grandma, Mrs Grace Ayorkor Acquah said 'Educating the child is everybody's business. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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

The best trust you can ever give to your children is financial literacy ~ Mac Duke The Strategist

so that it isn't upsetting to anybody. It's something we've always known about fairy tales – they talk about incest, the Oedipus complex, about psychotic mothers, like those of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel, who throw their children out. They tell things about life which children know instinctively, and the pleasure and relief lie in finding these things expressed in language that children can live with. You can't eradicate these feelings – they exist and they're a great source of creative inspiration. ~ Maurice Sendak

A rich man's soup - and all from a few stones. It seemed like magic! ~ Marcia Brown

Would you like some more pancakes? Annie asked. I could tell that Annie was a smart girl. I hate to eat on the job. But I must keep up my strength. ~ Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

A Wasn't just isn't. He just isn't present. But you ... You ARE YOU! And, now isn't that pleasant! ~ Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat is a picture book meritable of every child reader, whether he or she is just a beginner, or a bit more advanced. ("Reviews by Cat Ellington: The Complete Anthology, Vol. 1," 2018) ~ Cat Ellington

Children are sacred beings. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

She asked where he lived.
Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning. ~ J.M. Barrie

Once upon a time, they say, there was a girl ... there was a boy ... there was a person who was in trouble. And this is what she did ... and what he did ... and how they learned to survive it. This is what they did ... and why one failed ... and why another triumphed in the end. And I know that it's true, because I danced at their wedding and drank their very best wine. ~ Terri Windling

Only sweet people with good virtues can go to fairyland. Those who treat others meanly and without respect can never go there. ~ Janaki Sooriyarachchi

… but as even the stupidest toddler knows, covering your eyes makes you invisible. ~ Heidi Schulz

One of my rules is never to look sideways at what other people are doing but instead, do what I feel is right. ~ Annie Bryant

Big Ma didn't need to say any more and she didn't. T.J. was far from her favorite person and it was quite obvious that Stacey and I owed our good fortune entirely to T.J.'s obnoxious personality. ~ Mildred D. Taylor

I'm planting a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots. ~ Andrea Koehle Jones

We create our work for children not because they're "cute," but because they're human beings, deserving of respect. ~ Mo Willems

Angel of Fire is about an ordinary boy to whom extraordinary things happen ~ Wendy Milton

Where do starfish come from?" asked Sam.
"From the sky," answered Stella. "Starfish are shooting stars that fell in love with the sea."
"Weren't the stars afraid of drowning?" asked Sam.
"No," said Stella. "They all learned how to swim. ~ Marie-Louise Gay

I was astonished at how wonderful these books were; and even though I was occasionally discomforted when someone, having asked me what book I had in my pocket, looked aghast when I pulled out a copy of Heidi or Finn Family Moomintroll, I soon realized that my then-present condition of "second childhood" was not one of senility and depression but of renewal and awakening. ~ Jonathan Cott

The evening uneven sea glimmered with slices of dairy moon, the surface waves a shifting brew of dark tea stirred by an atmospheric spoon. ~ Neale Osborne

Those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child. ~ Katherine Paterson

Children's literature is considerably more functional than a good portion of adult literature. If I were cynical, I might say: Children's books are written to be read; adult books are written to be talked about at cocktail parties.
There may be more truth that cynicism in that statement. My impression is that many adult books are written only to shock the reader (a short term goal, since shock quickly turns into boredom) or as calisthenics for the author's ego.
On the other hand, children's literature seems an area where books function as they were meant to; where they amaze, delight, and move our emotions. We can respect and admire any number of current adult books, but I find it hard to love them. ~ Lloyd Alexander

When teachers participate in a literary experience with a professionally presented children's play, they are offering their students a text quite different from anything that they will experience within their classrooms. Within this literary experience, teachers join as equals with their students, and each, as audience members within the darkened space of the performance, create their own poems to hold within themselves or share with others. ~ James Hugh Comey

The odd was the ordinary at Alistair Grim's. The people who lived there were odd. The things they did there were odd. Even the there itself there was odd. ~ Gregory Funaro

On the level of high art, in their common efforts to express human truths, relationships, attitudes, and personal visions, children's literature and adult literature meet and sometimes merge, and we wonder then whether a given work is truly for children or truly for grown-ups. The answer, of course, is: for both. ~ Lloyd Alexander

In this quiet corner, the best wild flowers grow, and the first peepers are heard in the spring, even before the snow melts. Here, owls call from the treetops in the early morning, and the irreverent crows hold their noisy conventions. Here, the mother deer has her fawn, and the migrating geese come to rest. It is here that the fox is safe from the hunters. ~ Alice Provensen

It is my joy to share with present and future generations these stories so full of humor, warmth, and adventure – and so rich in the rural culture of the early 1900's. ~ Linda Boynton Pedersen

There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen]."

"Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations… like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images…"

"What is this one obsession?"

"I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it."

"There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'"

"Inside the rain?"

"When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain… as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well."

"It's strange y ~ Jonathan Cott

Jocelyn did not want to always remain the same. Where was the adventure in that? ~ Heidi Schulz

A wife is like a children's movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete ~ John Steinbeck

It is the best way to write poetry, letting things come. -Winnie-the-Pooh ~ A.A. Milne

Lots of children I know are excited to grow up. So I wonder why this man was so happy to become young again? ~ Sara Rich

I love letters from little kids. Adults never proclaim themselves 'your #1 fan! ~ Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Only where children gather
is there any real chance of fun. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

Because we are human we have a long childhood, and one of the jobs of that childhood is to sculpt our brains. We have years
about twelve of them
to draw outlines of the shape we want our sculpted brain to take. Some of the parts must be sculpted at critical times. One cannot, after all, carve out toes unless he knows where the foot will go. We need tools to do some of the fine work. The tools are our childhood experiences. And I'm convinced that one of those experiences must be children's books. And they must be experienced within the early years of our long childhood. ~ E.L. Konigsburg

Protect our children from failure, is impossible; Teach them how to get up can make the difference ~ Mayra A. Diaz

Sunny was a treat to read. It is most appealing as the story is very well done and the artwork is beautiful. I applaud the author for writing a book to meet the needs of very young children as well as children of elementary school age. I experienced many different feelings as I read the book and I know otehrs will experience the same thing. The guide to further discussion at the end of teh book will be most helpful as foster parents read this story to the children in their care. ~ Theresa MacInnis Schimmel

Calico Kitty

My calico kitty
was painted and primed
she could prowl
the night away ~
without spending a dime... ~ Muse

A skunk is walking by. Skunks don't hurry or hide. The dogs and cats pretend not to notice them. It is best not to. ~ Alice Provensen

Have a little faith in your sons. This journey will be the making of them. ~ C.J. Milbrandt

Writing for children can be completely honest in non-cynical ways. In adult books you're required to be cynical. It embarrasses us to say positive things. You can have affection and hope in children's books, but that is out of fashion in adult fiction. ~ Lloyd Alexander

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book. In adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness ... The present-day would-be George Eliots take up their stories as if with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it. ~ Philip Pullman

It was a well-known fact that keeping track of time was not Parry Pretty's forte ... If time were Parry's pet, it would have died tied to a tree somewhere out back long ago. ~ S.J. Musgraves

I'm planting a tree to teach me to make the world a better place. ~ Andrea Koehle Jones

[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger, hate and frustration - all the emotions that are an ordinary part of their lives and that they can perceive only as as ungovernable and dangerous forces. To master these forces, children turn to fantasy: that imagined world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction. ~ Maurice Sendak

Be generous with your smile and try not to frown.
And you will see my children; your smile will never let you down ☺ ~ Benny Bellamacina

Children's literature as a literary aberration or at best a minor amusement is a notion held most strongly by people who read the fewest children's books. I think it was Ruth Hill Viguers who compared this attitude with asking a pediatrician when he's going to stop fooling around and get down to the serious business of treating adults. ~ Lloyd Alexander

The fire in the evening was the best of all. Peter said is wasn't fie, but he couldn't tell me what it really was. You can thought, Grandfather, can't you?'
'It's the sun's way of saying goodnight to the mountains' he explained. 'He spreads that beautiful light over them so that they won't forget him till he comes back in the morning. ~ Joanna Spyri

People used to draw dragons on the edges of old maps. When the world hadn't been fully explored, mapmakers imagined dragons living at the far ends. ~ Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Why is it that those who are the most concerned with manners rarely have any themselves? ~ Heidi Schulz

The thing that is maybe the real difference, the fundamental difference, is that in adult literature you can have a literature of despair and end the work without any hope; you can have a literature of the absurd in which life is pointless, meaningless ... In children's literature you can have a tragic ending ... nevertheless, maybe what happens makes some kind of sense; maybe there is hope. We have got to pull out of ourselves some kind of hope. This is the key difference between writing for adults and children. ~ Lloyd Alexander

None of the seven is really good, for the excellent reason that Australian children never are. ~ Ethel Turner

I left a note for my mother. I always leave a note for my mother when I am on a case. ~ Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

Down vith children! Do them in!
Boil their bones and fry their skin!
Bish them, sqvish them, bash them, mash them!
Brrreak them, shake them, slash them, smash them!
Offer chocs vith magic powder!
Say "Eat up!" then say it louder.
Crrram them full of sticky eats,
Send them home still guzzling sveets.
And in the morning little fools
Go marching off to separate schools.
A girl feels sick and goes all pale.
She yells, "Hey look! I've grrrown a tail!"
A boy who's standing next to her
Screams, "Help! I think I'm grrrowing fur!"
Another shouts, "Vee look like frrreaks!
There's viskers growing on our cheeks!"
A boy who vos extremely tall
Cries out, "Vot's wrong? I'm grrrowing small!"
Four tiny legs begin to sprrrout
From everybody rrround about.
And all at vunce, all in a trrrice,
There are no children! Only MICE! ~ Roald Dahl

In the great green room, there was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of a cat jumping over the moon ... ~ Margaret Wise Brown

Even in this world of course it is the stupidest children who are most childish and the stupidest grown-ups who are most grown-up. ~ C.S. Lewis

Indigo People pierce the shadowy border between reality and the paranormal… ~ Sahara Sanders

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest. ~ C.S. Lewis

If the teachers and the parents do not believe that the child can cross the hump and get into the steep part of the S - curve, they may as well not try: The teacher ignores the children who have fallen behind and the parent stops taking interest in their education. But this behavior creates a poverty trap even where none exists in the first place. ~ Abhijit V. Banerjee

Be proud of your child, accept him as he is and do not heed the words and stares of those who know no better. This child has a meaning for you and for all children. You will find a joy you cannot now suspect in fulfilling his life for and with him. ~ Pearl S. Buck

Like my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson, these teachers preached and practiced the fixed mindset. In their classrooms, the students who started the year in the high-ability group ended the year there, and those who started the year in the low-ability group ended the year there. But some teachers preached and practiced a growth mindset. They focused on the idea that all children could develop their skills, and in their classrooms a weird thing happened. It didn't matter whether students started the year in the high- or the low-ability group. Both groups ended the year way up high. It's a powerful experience to see these findings. ~ Carol S. Dweck

Productivity - the amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy - is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of C.E.O.s and finance ministers. ~ Tim Jackson

Jeremy Spencer, always religious to an obsessive degree, had disappeared hours before a show while on tour with Fleetwood Mac in the U.S. According to band lore, it had happened right here in Los Angeles in 1971. He walked out of the band's hotel room announcing, "Just going out to a bookstore", and never returned. Somewhere on Hollywood Boulevard he climbed into a van belonging to members of a religious group who called themselves the Children of God. After a long, frantic search involving the police and close friends, Jeremy was finally tracked down to a ramshackle house that was the headquarters of the Children of God. He'd become a full-fledged member of a religious group that some would label a cult. And there he stayed. He refused to come back to either Fleetwood Mac or his wife and children, choosing instead to join a group of religious fanatics and leave all that he had ever known behind. And now he was standing in ~ Carol Ann Harris

Child, that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. Oh, the fruit is good, but they loath it ever after. ~ C.S. Lewis

At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages, mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing the things that children used to do in their spare time. Let them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have - I believe the English already use the phrase - "parity of esteem." An even more drastic scheme is not impossible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma - Beelzebub, what a useful word! - by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out 'A Cat Sat On A Mat'. ~ C.S. Lewis

One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple - children are made to feel that they must "give themselves up" if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse - loss of one's own mind.
Surrender is neither control nor morbid dependency and cannot be made contingent upon giving away one's "soul"; nonetheless, the person surrendering opens completely to the moment, and runs the risk of being deeply hurt. Sadly, in our society this is not uncommon and frequently serves to harden or embitter a person toward life in general. Or, on the other had being deeply hurt in the act of surrender can lead to angry and painful "cries for help." When this occurs there is an insatiable and wrathful desire to be cared for as a child is cared for and the horrid fear of loss of independence. ~ Christopher S. Hyatt

I'm unhappy doing just mole stuff. What's wrong with me? Why couldn't I look forward to digging my own burrow? ~ Mary T. Kincaid

I am the Mother's blade, the Mother's wrath ... You have poisoned her, raped her and her children. Left her to die. Now you will suffer, you will die. ~ R.S. Belcher

In order to confer their lost Nationality upon exiled Jews , the British with the help of the League of Nations began to rehabilitate the old Hebrew country, Palestine, with its long lost children. The Jews had maintained their race, religion, culture and language; and all they wanted was their natural territory to complete their Nationality. The reconstruction of the Hebrew Nation on Palestine is just an affirmation of the fact that Country, Race, Religion, Culture and Language must exist unequivocally together to form the Nation idea. ~ M. S. Golwalkar

I wonder if the folks at Christian books will fire you when they find out about your devil powers-John Gramm ~ Natasha Larry

What was life has crumbled. What was form, now falls away. Mortal chains unbind and the soul s free. May you find your way to the ancestors. May you find your path to the gods. May your bravery and courage be remembers in song and story, May your parents be proud, and ma our children carry your birthright. Sleep, and wander no more. ~ Yasmine Galenorn

Once I realized that Australia's top highway speed of 110 kilometers per hour was the same as going 65 in the U.S., all my hardened American enthusiasm for speed went limp until it felt like the car was hardly moving at all. Even worse, most stretches of the highway are restricted to 60 kilometers per hour, which is how fast Americans go when we're, like, passing a stopped school bus disembarking small children, or driving through a herd of puppies in the road. ~ Elle Lothlorien

Psychologists cannot fix the world so they fix women. ~ Germaine Greer

I grew up in China, but I live in the U.S. and I want my children to understand what's going on over there. They ask me sometimes, 'Are we Chinese or Australians?' My family are in L.A., New York and China, and they have the freedom to go back and forth, which is really, really nice. ~ Wendi Deng Murdoch

Marriage cannot be a job as it has become. ~ Germaine Greer

Nothing is more characteristically juvenile than contempt for juvenility ... youth's characteristic chronological snobbery. ~ C.S. Lewis

Ole Golly: You know what? You're an individual, and that makes people nervous. And it's gonna keep making people nervous for the rest of your life. ~ Louise Fitzhugh