Childrens Literature Quotes

There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon. ~ Anton Chekhov

There is no such thing as children's literature. ~ N. V. M. Gonzalez

I also really liked playing Mr. Tumnus in 'Narnia'. I got to play my favorite character in children's literature, which I loved. You don't get the chance to do that in other jobs. ~ James McAvoy

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

Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died. ~ E.B. White

They came generally from people writing theses on fantasy or on the Dark Is Rising books. They were full of questions I'd never thought about and false assumptions that I didn't want to think about. They would ask me in great detail for, say, the specific local and mythical derivations of my Greenwitch, a leaf-figure thrown over a Cornish cliff as a fertility sacrifice, and I would have to write back and say, "I'm terribly sorry; I made it all up." They told me I echoed Hassidic myth, which I hadn't read, and the Mormon suprastructure, which I'd never even heard of. They saw symbols and buried meanings and allegories everywhere. I'd thought I was making a clear soup, but for them it was a thick mysterious stew.

from "In Defense of the the Artist" in Signposts to Criticism of Children's Literature (1983) ~ Susan Cooper

The qualities that make for excellence in children's literature can be summed up in a single word: imagination. And imagination as it relates to the child is, to my mind, synonymous with fantasy. Contrary to most of the propaganda in books for the young, childhood is only partly a time of innocence. It is, in my opinion, a time of seriousness, bewilderment, and a good deal of suffering. It's also possibly the best of all times. Imagination for the child is the miraculous, freewheeling device he uses to course his way through the problems of every day ... It's through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. ~ Maurice Sendak

They [Narnia] are, perhaps, the greatest classics of children's literature of the twentieth century. ~ Douglas Gresham

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

That night, as the stars sparkled in the sky, Polly dreamed... ~ Brian Maunder

A lot of (children's literature) beginners get bogged down by morals. A moral should never be driving the story. And a moral should never be confused with a plot. You can't preach to kids, and you can't talk down to them, either. It's amazing how they sense condescension. ~ Patty Smith

There's a different flavor to children's literature you read after you grow up than there was reading it as a child. Things that were sweet as a child become bitter once you grow up. ~ Mizuki Nomura

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

When I started writing and illustrating, I knew little of classic children's literature. My stories came from real life, from my concerns about what was happening in the world. ~ Michael Foreman

You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway ~ Walt Disney Company

It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it. ~ Penelope Lively

You've seen Star Wars?'
'Seen it and denounced it.'
'You've denounced Star Wars?'
She looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Hollywood should not glorify witches.'
'I think you've missed the point ... '
'I also denounced Harry Potter.'
'Really?'
'Yes.'
'Because ... '
' ... because literature, especially children's literature, should not glorify witches.'
'Oda, what do you do for fun?'
She thought about it, then said, without a jot of humour, 'I denounce things. ~ Kate Griffin

You must return to the fairy cave while children sleep. Fairies only exist if children believe in Fairyland. If you return after they wake from their dreams, you could remain frozen between two worlds for all eternity. ~ Caz Greenham

Margaret Atwood was the author who took me out of children's literature and guided me towards adult literature. ~ Eleanor Catton

I don't know anyone who remembers meeting their parents when they were a baby so i'm just like everybody else. -Zoey (100% Real) ~ Tara Michener

Rhyme and reason answer all problems ~ Norton Juster

In Britain, the great hidden secret of talking animals and children's literature is how political it was in its bones, beneath the obvious cuteness. ~ Andrew O'Hagan

When last I checked, you were a sorcerer, not a Jedi."
"You've seen Star Wars?"
"Seen it and denounced it."
"You've denounced Star Wars?"
She looked me straight in the eye and said, "Hollywood should not glorify witches."
"I think you've missed the point ... "
"I also denounce Harry Potter."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Because ... "
" ... because literature, especially children's literature, should not glorify witches."
"Oda, what do you do for fun?"
She thought about it, then said, without a jot of humor, "I denounce things. ~ Kate Griffin

I have a passion for children's literature. Young adult literature. I love it. I've always loved it. ~ Gretchen Rubin

No significant body of feminist writing addresses boys directly, letting them know how they can construct an identity that is not rooted in sexism. There is no body of feminist children's literature that can serve as an alternative to patriarchal perspectives, which abound in the world of children's books. ~ Bell Hooks

Animals in children's literature always have a soul life because children perceive animals as having souls. ~ Linda Bender

The work of one author or artist may stimulate another author or artist to push the edge, to take the risk, to go where the field hasn't gone before. The result -very exciting children's literature and art ... exciting both for the professional and for the intended audience, the children. ~ Karen Hesse

The attitude that poetry should not be analyzed is prevalent among many who consider themselves experts on children's literature. But I suspected that kids like to look closely at things and figure out what makes them go. ~ X.J. Kennedy

Rooms, corridors, bookcases, shelves, filing cards, and computerized catalogues assume that the subjects on which our thoughts dwell are actual entities, and through this assumption a certain book may be lent a particular tone and value. Filed under Fiction, Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a humorous novel of adventure; under Sociology, a satirical study of England in the eighteenth century; under Children's Literature, an entertaining fable about dwarfs and giants and talking horses; under Fantasy, a precursor of science fiction; under Travel, an imaginary voyage; under Classics, a part of the Western literary canon. Categories are exclusive; reading is not--or should not be. Whatever classifications have been chosen, every library tyrannizes the act of reading, and forces the reader--the curious reader, the alert reader--to rescue the book from the category to which it has been condemned. ~ Alberto Manguel

It is, of course, traditional in children's literature to get rid of the parents. ~ Anthony Horowitz

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

Turning on the shower, he thought of the wildly fancy bathroom at Charlotte's house. It was funny to think of, but the bathrooms he liked weren't fancy; this one, and the one at Seymour's, and the one at Harry's. They weren't fancy, but they were home. He got in the shower. The one squirt that always went haywire hit him right in the eye. He laughed up into the warm water running over his ears. ~ Louise Fitzhugh

I've always been interested in a certain kind of sophistication in children's literature. I loved Roald Dahl; I loved the underlying nastiness of some of his - darkness of his tales. ~ David Small

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

Within the magic of the asking,
lives the magic to receive,
wonderfully exciting, endless possibilities! ~ Amma Sharon

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

Her constant orders for beheading are shocking to those modern critics of children's literature who feel that juvenile fiction should be free of all violence and especially violence with Freudian undertones. Even the Oz books of L. Frank Baum, so singularly free of the horrors to be found in Grimm and Andersen, contain many scenes of decapitation. As far as I know, there have been no empirical studies of how children react to such scenes and what harm if any is done to their psyche. My guess is that the normal child finds it all very amusing and is not damaged in the least, but that books like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz should not be allowed to circulate indiscriminately among adults who are undergoing analysis. ~ Martin Gardner

Regarding children's literature, look for interesting content and well-constructed sentences clothed in literary language. The imagination should be warmed and the book should hold the interest of the child. Life's too short to spend time with books that bore us. ~ Deborah Taylor-Hough

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

In some ways, getting published in children's literature is a little more open than publishing adult literature. It's less hinged on who you might know. ~ Marie Rutkoski

The Grimm collections were never intended for children. Not because kids were excluded, but because the division we make today of children's literature didn't exist then. The idea of protecting children from tales with violence didn't occur until the earlier part of the 19th century. ~ Jack Zipes

In a single lifetime, roughly from 1865 to 1930, one finds the pioneering and patterning works of modern fantasy, science fiction, children's literature and detective fiction, of modern adventure, mystery and romance. ~ Michael Dirda

A glassy calm replaced the storm surrounding their boat.
The distant thunder struck a note, white-hot and remote.
An invisible magnet seemed to steer their course.
The island pulled them in with its dreamy force. ~ J.Z. Bingham

Kid's books should be just as good as any other books. No. They should be held to a *higher* standard than other literature for the same reason that we take extra care with children's food. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Samuel Marshak was one of the founders of modern Russian children's literature. Soviet children used to know his poems by heart, but only since glasnost have American editors shown any interest in issuing his poems here. ~ Michael Patrick Hearn

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 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

I wouldn't eat too many of those [half-baked ideas] if I were you. They may look good, but you can get terribly sick of them."
-Tock ~ Norton Juster

I'm kind of a reluctant Anglophile. My mother's a children's librarian, and all of the children's literature I read was from her childhood - E. Nesbit and Dickens, which isn't children's literature at all, but I was sort of steeped in English literature. I thought I was of that world. ~ Jefferson Mays

If we are able to read stereotypical language of the Bible in reference to suffering -- and particularly the suffering involved in siege warfare -- as a measure not so much of the historical details of the disaster or catastrophe, but rather as a measure of the emotional, social, and obviously therefore spiritual impact of the disaster (after all, this is religious literature), then our analysis of a good deal of biblical literature in relation to the exile would need to be rethought. Stereotypical literature of suffering is not literature that can somehow be 'decoded' to mean that the exiles actually lived in Babylonian comfort. (p. 104) ~ Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

She knew exactly how she ought to feel, for she was well read in our greater and lesser English poets, but the unfortunate fact was that she did not really like being kissed at all. ~ Barbara Pym

One is not quite certain that creativeness in the arts, literature, and science functions best in an environment of absolute freedom. Chances are that a relatively mild tyranny stimulates creativeness. ~ Eric Hoffer

When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on. ~ Carl Sandburg

I am home for good like a tiny shoot. The tiny shoots in my mother's garden. I have a passion for idle chatter about books, language and literature. Preparing a meal together, that can be romantic. ~ Abigail George

No matter the technological sophistication of ultramodern molecular research, and no matter the increasingly abstruse terminology of its current literature, the circle of knowledge always returns to its starting point: In order to live, man must have air. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

Acting is playing pretend, playing a children's game at an adult level, but with children's rules. It's fun to play bad guys. I've never been in a fight in my life, so it's fun to play something that's different. ~ Ray Liotta

My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature. ~ John Ruskin

Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law. Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ, it's here. And the hour's late. And the war's begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colors ... All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need intact and safe. We're not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good ... Right now we have a horrible job; we're waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end. It's not pleasant, but then we're not in control, we're the odd minority crying in the wilderness. When the war's over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world. ~ Ray Bradbury

In 1916, Infants' and Children's Wear Review insisted upon pink for boys and blue for girls. In 1939, Parents magazine claimed that pink was a good color for boys because it was a pale version of red, which was the color of Mars, the war god. Blue was good for girls because it was the color of Venus, and of the Virgin Mary. So, pink for girls is a relatively recent trend, and utterly random. ~ Tim Gunn

I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare. ~ Ben Okri

Work is and always has been my salvation and I thank the Lord for it. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Politics is the great generalizer and literature the great particularizer, and not only are they in an inverse relationship to each other---they are in an antagonistic relationship. ~ Philip Roth

Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

Of all man's instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

People won't see Imagination in something that doesn't relate to their experience because of their own mental limitations. I want people to escape the expected and ordinary, to escape the regular expectations of a story, and truly step into a different world of literature. ~ Lionel Suggs

It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

After having read a lot of fiction, literature, whatever you want to call it, from Wolfe to Houellebecq, I think you have to have an understanding and insight of the human condition that is informed and motivated by a desire to immerse yourself in the human world and bring these stories to bear. ~ Henry Rollins

English is, from my point of view as an Americanist, an ethnicity. And English literature should be studied in Comparative Literature. And American literature should be a discipline, certainly growing from England and France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and the Native traditions, particularly because those helped form the American canon. Those are our backgrounds. And then we'd be doing it the way it ought to be done. And someday I hope that it will be. ~ Paula Gunn Allen

Your father may never have produced one of those stuffy tomes we call great literature, but he left the world a substantial collection of delightful adventure stories. ~ David E. Fessenden

Others, amounting to four novels and a mess of short stories which I did not think worth preserving, I have done my best to eliminate from the record by refusing all requests for permission to reprint them, and I hope I have done a good job of making them hard to unearth. ~ Leslie Charteris

Big Bird was the biggest star, I mean, children's favorite for a number of years. I have a 22-year-old granddaughter whose first words were 'Big Bird.' ~ Joan Ganz Cooney

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent. ~ Jonathan Swift

Change for someone today and tomorrow you will hear them say, "You are not the same. ~ Akash Lakhotia

The image of a wood has appeared often enough in English verse. It has indeed appeared so often that it has gathered a good deal of verse into itself; so that it has become a great forest where, with long leagues of changing green between them, strange episodes of poetry have taken place. Thus in one part there are lovers of a midsummer night, or by day a duke and his followers, and in another men behind branches so that the wood seems moving, and in another a girl separated from her two lordly young brothers, and in another a poet listening to a nightingale but rather dreaming richly of the grand art than there exploring it, and there are other inhabitants, belonging even more closely to the wood, dryads, fairies, an enchanter's rout. The forest itself has different names in different tongues- Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Igdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it. ~ Charles Williams

Books are too personal as objects to be displayed, in case a potential buyer is put off by your taste for Nietzsche or Marian Keyes. You would not display the contents of your knicker and sock drawer, or your bathroom cabinet with its face creams and cough remedies, so why put off potential buyers with your taste in literature? ~ Linda Grant

In my light-headedness and fatigue, which made me feel drastically cut off from myself and as if I were observing it all at a remove, I walked past candy shops and coffee shops and shops with antique toys and Delft tiles from the 1800s, old mirrors and silver glinting in the rich, cognac-colored light, inlaid French cabinets and tables in the French court style with garlanded carvings and veneerwork that would have made Hobie gasp with admiration - in fact the entire foggy, friendly, cultivated city with its florists and bakeries and antiekhandels reminded me of Hobie, not just for its antique-crowded richness but because there was a Hobie-like wholesomeness to the place, like a children's picture book where aproned tradespeople swept the floors and tabby cats napped in sunny windows. But there was much too much to see, and ~ Donna Tartt

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it. ~ Mark Twain

Therapy is to make one happy. What is the point of that? Happy people are not interesting. Better to accept the burden of unhappiness and try to turn it into something worthwhile, poetry or music or painting: that is what he been believes. ~ J.M. Coetzee

The first forms of writing emerged not for art, literature, or love, not for spiritual or liturgical purposes, but for business - all literature could be said to originate from sales receipts (sorry). ~ Daniel J. Levitin

I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually. ~ Ben Fountain

Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham. ~ Joseph Conrad

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

We have the opportunity to pour into them what they were created to be; and pullout the treasure that they cannot yet see. ~ Momma Moon

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog. ~ Joseph Conrad

When children's problem behavior persists despite rules and consequences, it often means that they do not have the skills to cope with challenging situations. We must either change those situations or teach better coping skills. ~ Jed Baker

It's a lucky man who leaves early from life's banquet, before he's drained to the dregs his goblet - full of wine; yes, it's a lucky man who has not read life's novel to the end, but has been wise enough to part with it abruptly - like me with my Onegin. ~ Alexander Pushkin

Without literature my life would be miserable. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

the whole point of literature, I think, is that it's the best technology we have for communicating what another person's life feels like from the inside. ~ Garth Greenwell

What lasts is what is written. We look to literature to find the essence of an age. ~ Peter Brodie