Childrens Book Quotes

The lightning girl is easier to read than the pages of a children's book. ~ Victoria Aveyard

My ears are too beeg for my head. My head ees too beeg for my body. I am not a Siamese cat ... I AM A CHIHUAHUA!
Skippyjon Jones (In his very best Spanish accent) ~ Judy Schachner

Like a simple wildflower, standing strong through rain, wind and hail, love, finally, had its way, and it was content. ~ Ella Rose Carlos

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

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

I've been a children's book editor, a nanny, a camp counselor, a barista, a research lab assistant, and a movie theater ticket-taker. ~ Lisa Graff

Sarah in the City of Moon is a children's book debating humanity, tackling questions such as: are conflicts taught or are they innate?" – Dalia Qutob
'Children are the best Legislators of the law and bylaw of love.'-Dalia Qutob ~ Fida Fayez Qutob & Dalia Qutob

Is it like a Harry Potter thing?"
He turned his head then. "A what?"
"A Harry Potter thing," she said again. "You know, don't say Voldemort's name because you might attract his attention?"
He considered it. "You mean the children's book."
"I have got to get you to watch more movies," she said. "You'd enjoy these. Yes, I mean the children's book. ~ Patricia Briggs

Any seed or insect or lizard or mammal that found itself in LA had to believe that there was a chance to thrive. Living in Southern California was like waking up in a children's book titled Would Be If I Could Be. ~ Walter Mosley

I know they were mean to me and to you, but helping them now is the right thing to do. ~ Lauren Isabelle Pierre

Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn't what they expect when they see a film that's been adapted from a children's book? ~ Spike Jonze

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. ~ Tony Millionaire

I move between the two: I write an adult novel, and then I write a children's book. I quite enjoy that. It's a nice change of pace each time. ~ John Boyne

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

I don't know how to write a children's book. ~ Maurice Sendak

I've chosen Peter Pan by JM Barrie as my favourite children's book. ~ Tessa Jowell

In fourth grade, I had a talk with the school psychologist about all the things that actively terrified me . . . After our session, he handed my mom a list of all my fears . . . Highest (and most memorable) on the list was the specific fear that I'd accidentally churn myself into butter. This was inspired by a creepy antique children's book called Little Black Sambo, which is one of those stories from the simpler, more racist times of yore when people wrote frightening, insulting tales to help children fall asleep at night. It was highly popular back in the day and has since been rightly banned or taken out of circulation. But my mom had a copy lying around. It's about a boy who goes on an adventure and ends up getting chased by tigers, who circle and circle around a tree so fast that they churn themselves into a pool of butter, which the boy then takes home for his mother to use to make pancakes. Like ya do. Anyway, I was always riddled with fear that I'd somehow be transformed into melted butter, which now doesn't really sound like that much of a bummer. It sounds more like how I'd like to spend my last twenty-four hours on this earth. ~ Amy Schumer

As adults we choose our own reading material. Depending on our moods and needs we might read the newspaper, a blockbuster novel, an academic article, a women's magazine, a comic, a children's book, or the latest book that just about everyone is reading. No one chastises us for our choice. No one says, 'That's too short for you to read.' No one says, 'That's too easy for you, put it back.' No one says 'You couldn't read that if you tried
it's much too difficult.'
Yet if we take a peek into classrooms, libraries, and bookshops we will notice that children's choices are often mocked, censured, and denied as valid by idiotic, interfering teachers, librarians, and parents. Choice is a personal matter that changes with experience, changes with mood, and changes with need. We should let it be. ~ Mem Fox

Love makes things possible, not easy. ~ Sam Gayton

Pedaling down Dune Drive on a red beach cruiser, Dani ahead of her and Vanessa behind her, is a transporting experience. The night is quiet; the air on her face is soft; her hair streams behind her; the stars above are as brilliant as stars in a children's book. They could be nine years old, or fifteen, or twenty-one; they've ridden bikes down Dune Drive at all of those ages and all of the ones in between. There must have been so much more to those summers, but what she remembers are the two weeks she spent in Avalon with Dani and Vanessa - two weeks that always went by too quickly, but that in memory stretch to fill an entire season. ~ Meg Donohue

You may have even commented on the surprising inappropriateness of such a murderous and bloody scene appearing in a children's book. It's fun to feel offended, isn't it? ~ Dav Pilkey

In life, as in Chess, ones own Pawns block ones way. A mans very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him ~ Charles Buxton

I'm also very hopeful to continue my literary journey into the realm of children's books. To be able to read my kids a children's book that was inspired by them would be everything! ~ Trista Sutter

Mrs Moonsong sat in the tiny room lit only by flickering candlelight and a small beam of moonlight which slanted through the small roof window. ~ Helen Laycock

People say to me, 'How do I know if a word is real?' You know, anybody who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it. That makes it real. ~ Erin McKean

I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing. ~ Candace Bushnell

Maurice Sendak never - I remember he said something that was very striking because it's something I never thought about. I always loved his work, and he said, 'I don't really view myself as a children's book author. I just try and write about childhood as honestly as I can.' ~ Spike Jonze

For in the forest someone is always watching and someone is always listening! ~ Nancy B. Brewer

People think children's books are about teddy bears and little flowers. I realize people sometimes don't know what to do with my books because they say, 'Is it a children's book, and what age group?' ~ Peter Sis

This allowed her two glorious hours sitting quietly by herself in a cozy corner, devouring one book after another. When she had read every single children's book in the place, she started wandering round in search of something else. ~ Roald Dahl

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. ~ Sophie Kinsella

He never wanted to be king, and it was that very trait that made him a great king. It was the characteristic comprising all extraordinary leaders. ~ Ella Rose Carlos

The Butcher's Shop

The pigs are strung in rows, open-mouthed,
dignified in martyrs' deaths. They hang
stiff as Sunday manners, their porky heads
voting Tory all their lives, their blue rosettes
discarded now. The butcher smiles a meaty smile,
white apron stained with who knows what,
fingers fat as sausages. Smug, woolly cattle
and snowy sheep prance on tiles, grazing
on eternity, cute illustrations in a children's book.
What does the sheep say now?
Tacky sawdust clogs your shoes.
Little plastic hedges divide the trays of meat, playing farms.
playing farms. All the way home
your cold and soggy paper parcel bleeds. ~ Angela Topping

I'm one of those very lucky people who absolutely love what they do for a living. There is no career better suited to my eccentricities, strengths, and passions than that of a children's book author. ~ Mary Pope Osborne

I had written children's books for 14 years before I published 'Wicked.' And none of them were poorly reviewed, and none of them sold enough for me to be able to buy a bed. ~ Gregory Maguire

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. ~ Brian Selznick

I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career. ~ Al Yankovic

i have read a couple of children's book. But this book is amazing ~ Anitha L. Jackson

People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. 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. ~ Martin Amis

So next time you go to a museum, keep your eyes open; you never know what you will see. ~ Isaac Du Toit

When you truly believe in the desires of your heart, they show themselves to you, creating a world you wish to see. When you believe in the bad things of your world, they also become visible, weighing on your heart, which makes peace hard to find."
Den the Wise Oak Tree, See the Little People…An Enchanting Adventure ~ Chris DiSano Davenport

I've always felt that I was a bit of an outsider to the British children's-book illustration scene, because I don't work in line and wash. ~ Anthony Browne

We're often wrong at predicting who or what will transform us. Encountering certain people, books, music, places, or ideas ... at just the right time can immediately make our lives happier, richer, more beautiful, resonant, or meaningful. When it happens, we feel a kind of instant love for them, both deep and abiding. Now and then it can be something as trifling as a children's book, a returned telephone call, or a night at a seaside bar in Mykonos. ~ Jonathan Carroll

It's important, when you see magic, to recognize it. You don't often get a second chance. ~ Cassie Beasley

I was doing a children's book on self-esteem, and I really felt like I wanted to shed the shame I'd been feeling - and maybe make it easier for women my age who had probably felt bad about themselves. ~ Jamie Lee Curtis

Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child ... Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence. ~ Orson Scott Card

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. ~ Cecily Von Ziegesar

I wrote my first full book when I was fourteen, and that was 'Obernewtyn.' It was also the first book I had published. It was accepted by the first publisher I sent it to, and it was short listed for Children's Book of the Year in the older readers category in Australia. ~ Isobelle Carmody

I don't change the language for children books. I don't make the language simpler. I use words that they might have to look up in the dictionary. The books are shorter, but there's just not that much difference other than that to be honest. And the funny thing is, I have adult writer friends [to whom I would say], "Would you think of writing a children's book?" and they go, "No, God, I wouldn't know how." They're quite intimidated by the concept of it. And when I say to children's books writers, would they write an adult book, they say no because they think they're too good for it. ~ John Boyne

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. ~ Colin Thompson

A lot of excellent illustrators are working at the moment
especially in fantasy and children's books. It is exciting also to see graphic artists such as Dave McKean, in his film Mirrormask, moving between different media. I also greatly admire the more traditional work of Gennady Spirin and Roberto Innocenti. Kinuko Craft, John Jude Palencar, John Howe, Charles Vess, Brian Froud ... I'll stop there, as the list would get too long. But
in a fit of pride and justified nepotism
I'll add my daughter, Virginia Lee, to the list. Her first illustrated children's book, The Frog Bride [coming out in the U.K. in September, 2007], will be lovely. ~ Alan Lee

So the beloved children's book author took a deep breath, opened his own book to the very first page, and began reading, hoping with all his heart that the story would remind him where his sister went all those years ago.... ~ Chris Colfer

I love Inuit art, and most anything you would find in a folk art museum, as well as children's art or children's book illustrators or illustrators in general - all the kinds of work that my paintings would draw comparisons to. ~ Neil Farber

If I revise a children's book, if I'm spending three hours on the first draft, I'm probably spending 30 minutes revising it. I mean, come on! But to redo a painting? That's hard work. ~ Michael Ian Black

Every book is a children's book if the kid can read! ~ Mitch Hedberg

Children's book writers tend to feel quite superior, and adult writers tend to feel they wouldn't know how to write a children's book - which might surprise you because I think a lot of people think it's the other way around. ~ John Boyne

At university - when I was supposed to be studying biochemistry - I had tried to write a children's book about a boy and a wolf cub, and there was a paragraph in that which was from the wolf's point of view. ~ Michelle Paver

I create books for six-year-olds. I don't know why that time of my life was so important to me, but no matter what I draw, it always looks like it comes from a children's book. I can't resist. I'll set out to paint a serious picture then think, "Well, maybe there would be a little bunny in that corner." ~ Jan Brett

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

'Joker' was a violent, dark, and brutal book, so I wanted to do something a little less heavy. I played around with the idea of a children's book, and that eventually became 'Noel.' And I just kept finding these parallels between things I could do with Batman and Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol.' ~ Lee Bermejo

I'd forced books on my kids from the day they were born and, as it turned out, it had been completely unnecessary because all of them liked to read. Or maybe they liked to read because I'd read aloud nearly every children's book in print. ~ Jeff Shelby

The Paperbats book. Successful publication release with 30 books downloaded in first day and a half.
"This delightful childrens' book has just been published on smashwords, where it can be read for free! I invite you to enjoy a lovely story with yany young children. ~ Jerry Evans

Writing a children's book means you cannot spin out long narratives or have complex character development. ~ Norman Macleod

Can we go to Alum Bay, please?" Snugs asked the moose, his little nose twitching with excitement, and his voice a little faster than usual because he couldn't wait ~ Suzy Davies

My process is surprisingly straightforward. I find myself with little to do over a stretch of time and I say, "I should write children's books today." Then I sit down and write a children's book, and if it takes more than, realistically, three hours, I feel like I've done something wrong. ~ Michael Ian Black

Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by generations of readers, are very different from the destinies foreseen for them by their authors. Gulliver's Travels, with a minimum of expurgation, has become a children's book; a new illustrated edition is produced every Christmas. That's what comes of saying profound things about humanity in terms of a fairy story. ~ Aldous Huxley

This is surely the most significant of the elements that Tolkien brought to fantasy ... his arranged marriage between the Elder Edda and "The Wind in the Willows"
big Icelandic romance and small-scale, cozy English children's book. The story told by "The Lord of the Rings" is essentially what would happen if Mole and Ratty got drafted into the Nibelungenlied. ~ Adam Gopnik

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

My first children's book, 'Tickle Monster,' was inspired by tickling my son one evening. ~ Josie Bissett

I didn't write professionally at first. It took me nine years to get anything published. At the beginning I mostly wrote picture books, which were rejected by every children's book publisher in America. The first book of mine to be accepted for publication was ELLA ENCHANTED, and not one but two publishers wanted it. That day, April 17, 1996, was one of the happiest in my life. ~ Gail Carson Levine

The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years.
Roald Dahl ~ Roald Dahl

There are only three forms of high art: the symphony, the illustrated children's book and the board game. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

My brother, whom I adored, typed out a children's book illustrated by himself ... at the age of 14. My sister, with whom I always shared a double bed, had that effortless superiority of someone six years older and anxious to show it. But we were each as shy as voles. It seemed safer to keep to each other's company. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

Meeting writers is usually disappointing, at best. Writers who write sexy thrillers aren't necessarily sexy or thrilling in person. Children's book writers might look more like accountants, or axe murderers for that matter. Horror writers are very rarely scary looking, although they are frequently good cooks. ~ Kelly Link

I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child. ~ Leo Lionni

There's a new children's book that's coming out that features Sarah Palin as a hero. I don't want to give away the ending, but we finally find out who shot Bambi's mother. ~ Conan O'Brien

... always hold your heads high like a sunflower that stretches toward the light."

Childrens' book 'Land of Sunshine ~ Malene Rossau

You make learning fun. Like a children's book or after school special. Tell me about your ... um, Athenian women. ~ Richelle Mead

'Harry Potter' achieved a very special act of actual magic: it made it completely acceptable for an adult to carry around, read and enjoy a children's book. ~ Maureen Johnson

The problem has not been finding a place where I belong, which is how a children's book might tell it, but of finding ways of insisting on belonging nowhere. ~ Eula Biss

17 Christmases is a delightful children's book that I would highly recommend ~ Dandi Daley Mackall

The mistake ... was attributed in part to the fact that employees called the 3-year note 'Losh' and the 5-year note 'Bosh'. The comic mixing of 'Loshes' and 'Boshes' sounded more like a Dr. Seuss children's book than a cutting-edge risk-management operation. ~ Frank Partnoy

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

I peered through the old, mossy, stained glass windows at the interior, and it was as I guessed, run down. Were my parents really going to make this place home? ~ Isaac Du Toit

There are details within details within details to anchor you in the fact that we are talking about the real world, not an illustrated children's book fantasy world. ~ Joe Rohde

I dreamed of becoming a writer. And ... this dream is about to become a reality with the publication of my first, and hopefully not my last, children's book ... ~ Gloria Estefan

It's hilarious to me that by writing an obscene fake children's book I am mistaken for a parenting expert. ~ Adam Mansbach

It seemed more and more like something out of a children's book - the butterfly that followed the little girl all the way home to her fifth-floor walk-up. How above-the-law children's books are. Hansel and Gretel (littering, breaking and entering), Rumpelstiltskin (forced labor), Snow White (conspiracy to commit murder), Rapunzel (breach of contract). ~ Sloane Crosley

When a child keeps asking you to tell him/her a story, what they instinctively really want to know
is their true purpose and mission in life. Sadly, this knowledge was never sought out by their parents, and explains why childrens books are a very hot and lucrative industry. Instead of telling your child the truth of our history and existence, you are conditioned by society to simply read your kid a fairytale. ~ Suzy Kassem

But it's a little like that children's book, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, but in reverse: if you're not loved for who you are, you cease to be real. Definitely for the other person, and maybe for yourself, too. ~ Sue Halpern

Finally, thank you very much to Jeaniene Frost and Jill Myles. This book does have sex in it. Please don't hit me anymore."

~Ilona Andrews in the Acknowledgements section of Magic Bleeds ~ Ilona Andrews

How do you press a wildflower into the pages of an e-book? ~ Lewis Buzbee

I own a few thousand snapshots, which is small by the standards of most collectors I know. I generally only buy photos I think I may actually be able to use in a book one day. I need that focus when buying, because without it I'd just buy everything and my house would be overrun with bucket loads of snapshots; there are just too many beautiful images in the world, and I'd need to own them all. ~ Ransom Riggs

And this is where I, the narrator, tell you that it's my story and I'll do as I please. You can close the book at any time, you know. ~ K.L. Montgomery

True stories seldom have endings.
I don't want a happy ending, I want more story. ~ Frances Hardinge

And the world said, Child, you will not be missed. You are cheaper than a wrench, your back is a road; Your death is a table in a book. You had our wit, our heart was sealed to you: Man is the judgment of the world. ~ Randall Jarrell

However, questions arise. Are there people who aren't naive realists, or special situations in which naive realism disappears? My theory - the self-model theory of subjectivity - predicts that as soon as a conscious representation becomes opaque (that is, as soon as we experience it as a representation), we lose naive realism. Consciousness without naive realism does exist. This happens whenever, with the help of other, second-order representations, we become aware of the construction process - of all the ambiguities and dynamical stages preceding the stable state that emerges at the end. When the window is dirty or cracked, we immediately realize that conscious perception is only an interface, and we become aware of the medium itself. We doubt that our sensory organs are working properly. We doubt the existence of whatever it is we are seeing or feeling, and we realize that the medium itself is fallible. In short, if the book in your hands lost its transparency, you would experience it as a state of your mind rather than as an element of the outside world. You would immediately doubt its independent existence. It would be more like a book-thought than a book-perception. Precisely this happens in various situations - for example, In visual hallucinations during which the patient is aware of hallucinating, or in ordinary optical illusions when we suddenly become aware that we are not in immediate contact with reality. Normally, such experiences make us think something is wrong ~ Thomas Metzinger

I loved the movie theater so I always saw a lot of movies. And then there was a play, I saw in the local paper, they were having auditions for a play of a book I had read. Which was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. So I said, "oh, I've read this, so I'm perfect for the part of the lead." His name is escaping me. ~ Ed O'Neill

Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have? ~ Matthew Tobin Anderson

My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's. ~ Oscar Wilde