International Childrens Book Day Quotes

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

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

As we were wrapping up the book, I sat down and thought about all the lessons I'd learned over the past two years. I couldn't list them all, but here are a few:

Never complain about the price of a gift from your spouse--accept it with love and gratitude. You can't put a price on romance.

Take lots of videos, even of the mundane. You will forget the sound of your children's voices and you will miss your youth as much as theirs.

Celebrate every wedding anniversary.

Make time for dates. Hug your spouse every single morning. And always, ALWAYS, say "I love you."

Believe in your partner.

When you hit hard times as a couple, take a weekend away or at least a night out. The times that you least feel like doing it are likely the times that you need it the most.

Write love notes to your spouse, your children, and keep the ones they give you.

Don't expect a miniature pig to be an "easy" pet.

Live life looking forward with a goal of no regrets, so you can look back without them.

Be the friend you will need some day.

Often the most important thing you can do for another person is just showing up.

Question less and listen more.

Don't get too tied up in your plans for the future. No one really knows their future anyway.

Laugh at yourself, and with life.

People don't change their core character.

Be humble, genuine, a ~ Taya Kyle

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

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. ~ Edith Wharton

NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE

To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife
who washes the socks and the children,
and returns phone calls and library books and types.
In other words, the reason there are so many more
Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.
It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.
And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.
Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater
matinees--on Saturdays?
Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,
chicken pox or chipped teeth?
Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender
his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.
Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.
And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three
for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.
I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,
and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler
On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.
Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,
tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,
and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse
unless she also helps with the laundry. ~ Rochelle Distelheim

We have a civil rights photo collection in our house, a big, beautiful coffee table book with images so vivid they cause jaws to drop. When my daughters and their friends pick it up to look at the young Black boys and girls in the middle of a dangerous struggle, I remind them that our eyes are trained to look at the Black faces and their determination as they walk to school. But I tell them also to look at the white faces in the background: the young, jeering faces shouting slurs and throwing things. "All of those folks are now around your granddad's age," I tell my daughters. They're still with us, and those people now walk around, every day, living with what they did, and either trying to rectify it in their brains, through penance, or voting for Donald Trump and passing that hatred down to their children's children. That is this country. Them. We cannot afford to pretend they don't live among us. ~ Michael Bennett

TEN THINGS THAT PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T READ THE FIRST BOOK REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW.

I. One day, your father and mother were hugging, and they began to have special feelings. Warm feelings that tingled in their private places. It is likely they weren't wearing any clothes. At any rate, they began to rub against each other like two sticks trying to start a fire, and nine months later, you were born. If this is news to you, please put this book down now. There may well be big bad wolves and evil witches and fairies in the pages that follow, but I promise you, this isn't a children's story. ~ Elliott James

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

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

NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE
-by Rochelle Distelheim
To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife
who washes the socks and the children,
and returns phone calls and library books and types.
In other words, the reason there are so many more
Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.
It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.
And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.
Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater
matinees--on Saturdays?
Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,
chicken pox or chipped teeth?
Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender
his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.
Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.
And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three
for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.
I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,
and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler
On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.
Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,
tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,
and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse
unless she also helps with the laundry.
-Rochelle Distelheim
=============================== ~ Rochelle Distelheim

Children's books: Every time you find the right, the necessary, book for a child - a book about sadness overcome, unfairness battled, hearts mended - you perform the best kind of magic ... every time you give just the right book to just the right child, you're saying, "You, my friend, have potential." That is a gift. That is a miracle. And that is what you do, each of you, every single day. ~ Katherine Applegate

No Mr. West, it was not a choice
New children's chapter book disputes the notion that 400 years of slavery was a result of "mental imprisonment"

Cleveland, OH, - .In the words of the great Stan Lee, "With great power, comes great responsibility." When icons make erroneous statements, often they do so with out recognizing the long reaching effects their thoughtless statements may have. When Kanye West made his very controversial statements regarding slavery, describing it as a choice, an entire generation of young minds were watching and absorbing as inaccurate picture of history was painted for them and presented as fact. Author Michelle Person, former teacher, elementary school principal, and founder of Just Like Me Books (JLM) could not stand by and allow that fallacy to linger unchecked. Committed to promoting a love of reading and increasing literacy rates among high risk readers through an interactive platform that prominently features characters of color, JLM's newest release Leaders of the Revolution tells the story of Toussaint L'Ouverture and the first successful slave uprising in the western world.

The third book in the Nathaniel English series, aimed at children ages 6-11, follows 5th grade Nathaniel as he searches for solutions to his present day problems by learning about important historical figures of the past. Thanks to his mother's extensive at home library, Nathaniel is exposed to information that his teachers don't share, helpin ~ Michelle Person

Winthrop and his shipmates and their children and their children's children just wrote their own books and pretty much kept their noses in them up until the day God created the Red Sox. ~ Sarah Vowell

Then one day I thought it would be wonderful to make a whole book, to make my text and my drawings together, and that's how I started doing children's books. ~ Dick Bruna

I have a fond daydream of a day when, like normal, unclutterd folks, I can bring people through my house without hesitation, without secrecy, and without closed doors. More than that, I envision a day when I can confidently stride into every room of my house and find my children's birth certificates or my high school year book or a needle and thread whenever the need presents itself without breaking into hives. ~ Eve O. Schaub

The day when on the cover of my books, my name will appear in bigger fond than the title of my book- I will stop writing because that would be the death of the writer in me. ~ Kirtida Gautam

Life was a too-tall stack of books that had started to lean to one side, and each new day was another book on top. ~ Rebecca Stead

Though he would sometimes not touch a book for a week, he generally spent part of each day in reading ... if he sat in the library an hour, he would have half a dozen volumes around him, on the table, on chairs and on the floor. He seemed to read a few pages here and a few pages there, and pass from place to place, from volume to volume ... sometimes (though very rarely) he would get sufficiently interested in a volume to read it all. ~ Walt Whitman

In this day and age, where you have a lot of comic book movies made every day, and most of them are really good boys, it's important to have a couple bad boys out there, too. ~ Nicolas Cage

Usually when I finish the draft of a book, I'm sure I'll never write another one. I'm just that tired and sick of myself. But then another idea starts percolating. It usually begins with the narrator's name, then some idea that intrigues me about her life or situation. I try to ignore it as long as I can, because I know when I start writing, I'll be right back into it, every single day. But eventually, I just have to. It's a compulsion! ~ Sarah Dessen

Each day before the end of eve
she sought her lover, nor would him leave,
until the stars were dimmed, and day
came glimmering eastward silver-grey.
Then trembling-veiled she would appear,
and dance before him, half in fear;
there flitting just before his feet
she gently chid with laughter sweet:
'Come! dance now, Beren, dance with me!
For fain thy dancing I would see! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Like Desserts, books come in all kinds of tasty treats! ~ Carmela Dutra

Reading is a choice. The will to do depends the reader. We may or may not do it but when we kill reading, we kill a purposeful mind. Reading a page of a purposeful book per day is not only a great medicine to the mind but also a powerful antidote to ignorance and mediocrity ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Nelson, do you remember the spring day when we climbed the barn gable so we could see the seagulls that mysteriously blew into our clay hills
swept from an ocean neither of us had ever seen though it was scarcely a hundred miles away, each bird a genuine miracle high above the green barley? The time we saw that panther in the sycamore tree and Maw said it was the sign of war? Nelson, I am sixty-three years old, the same age that both Maw and Daddy were when they died. I have written this in testimony. With this book, I presume to be done now with such remembrance. But somehow I suspect it will go on, this peering down old wells, this excavation of memory and its shades. ~ Joe Bageant

A rainy day's a good day to be in bed with a good book or with someone whose read one. ~ T.K. Lukas

There are no obstacles which our Savior's love cannot overcome. The High Places of victory and union with Christ can be reached by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God, by laying down of our own will and accepting His. The lessons of accepting and triumphing over evil, of becoming acquainted with grief, and pain, and of finding them transformed into something incomparably precious; these are the lessons of the allegory in this book. ~ Hannah Hurnard

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

Jacquelyn, I love you. You are my mate and from this day forth every wolf will know that you are mine. But because I am selfish and a barbarian just as my mother called me, I don't want just the wolves to know you are mine. I want every man to know you are taken. I realize you are not ready to marry me right now. That is okay, I will wait. But I am asking you to tell me that you will be my wife in the human sense of the word one day. Wear this ring as a symbol that your heart is spoken for. Jacquelyn, will you marry me?
Loftis, Quinn (2011-11-18). Blood Rites: Book 2 Grey Wolves Series (The Grey Wolves Series) (p. 235). Kindle Edition. ~ Quinn Loftis

At this very moment I'm behind on a compilation that Slave Labor is doing for Free Comic Book Day. ~ Jhonen Vasquez

I love tweeting. I tweet every day. I stay in contact, I tell them what I'm doing. I've posted pictures of my books on there and they buy the books. It's a very good way to communicate with people, but I can't go to bed without tweeting something. I have to tweet something. ~ Carl Reiner

I prop my guitar up against the nightstand. Then I turn toward the bed and fall into it face first. The mattress is soft but firm, like a sheet of steel wrapped in a cloud. I roll around, moaning loud and long.

"Oh, that's good. Really, really good. What a grand bed!"

Sarah clears her throat. "Well. We should probably get to sleep, then. Big day tomorrow."

The pillow smells sweet, like candy. I can only imagine it's from her. I wonder if I pressed my nose to the crook of her neck, would her skin smell as delicious?

I brush away the thought as I watch her stiffly gather a pillow and blanket from the other side of the bed, dragging them to . . . the nook.

"What are you doing?"

She looks up, her doe eyes widening. "Getting ready for bed."

"You're going to sleep there?"

"Of course. The sofa's very uncomfortable."

"Why can't we share the bed?"

She chokes . . . stutters. "I . . . I can't sleep with you. I don't even know you."

I throw my arms out wide. "What do you want to know? Ask me anything - I'm an open book."

"That's not what I mean."

"You're being ridiculous! It's a huge bed. You could let one rip and I wouldn't hear it."

And the blush is back. With a vengeance.

"I'm not . . . I don't . . ."

"You don't fart?" I scoff. "Really? Are you not human?"

She curses under her breath, but I'd love to ~ Emma Chase

I was lonely, deadly lonely. And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.
It was years before I woke up without that longing for a face pressed against my breast, an arm about my shoulder. The sense of loss was there.
I never was so unhappy, never felt so great the sense of loneliness. No matter how many times I gave up mother, father, husband, brother, daughter, for His sake, I had to do it over again.
Tamar is partly responsible for the title of this book in that when I was beginning it she was writing me about how alone a mother of young children always is. I had also just heard from an old woman who lived a long and full life, and she too spoke of her loneliness ~ Dorothy Day

I guess if I wrote a book one day, it would be about hair. ~ Julia Louis-Dreyfus

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