Picture Books Quotes

I read everything aloud, novels as well as picture books. I believe the eye and ear are different listeners. So as writers, we have to please both. ~ Jane Yolen

I think the trick of writing a good picture book manuscript is to leave that space for illustration. An illustrated novel can do the same thing. ~ Mac Barnett

Remember picture books are the closest form of writing to a poem. Even though they don't have to rhyme, they must be poetic. They must be written so the worst actress can read with comfort and expression. ~ Kirby Larson

A picture book is a motorcycle: small, loud, fun, and zippy.
An easy reader is a chartered bus: obliged to carry a rather dull passenger roster of sanctioned curriculum, plus the baggage of an approved, limited vocabulary. The trick is to design your chartered bus to be as cool and sexy as a motorcycle. ~ Mo Willems

Consider a small child sitting on his mother's lap while she reads him a picture book. The picture book opens to a width that effectively places the child at the center of a closed circle - that of mother's body, arms, and the picture book ... That circle, so private and intimate, is a place apart form the demands and stresses of daily life, a sanctuary in and from which the child can explore the many worlds offered in picture books. Despite all of our society's technological advances, it still just takes one child, one book, and one reader, to create this unique space, to work this everyday magic. ~ Martha V. Parravano

I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure stories and mystery books, and I have wonderful memories of my mom reading picture books aloud to me. I learned that words are powerful. ~ Andrew Clements

I was born in a village in the northeast, and it wasn't until I was quite big that I saw my first train. I climbed up and down the station bridge, quite unaware that its function was to permit people to cross from one track to another. I was convinced that the bridge had been provided to lend an exotic touch and to make the station premises a place of pleasant diversity, like some foreign playground. I remained under this delusion for quite a long time, and it was for me a very refined amusement indeed to climb up and down the bridge. I thought that it was one of the most elegant services provided by the railways. When later I discovered that the bridge was nothing more than a utilitarian device, I lost all interest in it.
Again, when as a child I saw photographs of subway trains in picture books, it never occurred to me that they had been invented out of practical necessity; I could only suppose that riding underground instead of on the surface must be a novel and delightful pastime.
I have been sickly ever since I was a child and have frequently been confined to bed. How often as I lay there I used to think what uninspired decorations sheets and pillow cases make. It wasn't until I was about twenty that I realized that they actually served a practical purpose, and this revelation of human dullness stirred dark depression in me. ~ Osamu Dazai

What we look at determines what we see, and what we see, really see, becomes part of an inner museum of pictures and references, a mental collection that for most of us is not so much curated as acquired in a haphazard way. There is an opportunity with children to show them art and illustration that will furnish their minds with beauty and mystery, symmetry and wonder. The simplest mechanism for this is the selection of picture books that we share with them. ~ Meghan Cox Gurdon

Toilet paper unrolled and slithered
then wrapped around my tummy.
That paper tried to roll me up
into an Egyptian mummy. ~ Melinda K. Trotter

Emotionally, I have no picture-book illustrated with memories of my first five years, but externally, I have impressions that possess a haunting vividness comparable only to the texture of dreams, when dreams are tumultuously alive. ~ E.F. Benson

I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off ... As my friend Julius Lester says, 'A picture book is the essence of an experience.' ~ Patricia MacLachlan

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

Picture books are an emotional medium. They need to make us feel something. ~ Marla Frazee

Many adults that I have met in my time believed that picture books are 'babyish'. I hope I have changed minds on this, as I set out to do. ~ Anthony Browne

I am a believer in angels, though not the picture-book kind with wings and harps. Such angelic accoutrements seem as nonsensical to me as devils sporting horns and carrying pitchforks. To me, angel wings are merely symbolic of their role as divine messengers. ~ Richard Paul Evans

Nevertheless, old stories, old rumors, and old picture books still seemed to have their own hold on the memory of the world. What ~ Terry Pratchett

He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite. ~ Dorothy B. Hughes

The great thing about making picture books is that you can make absolutely anything you want happen. It's a bit like making a film, but you don't need lots of money for actors and costumes - you just need pens, paper, and your imagination. ~ Mini Grey

Create a Chocolate Factory There may be as many different types of playrooms as there are families, but every one of them should have the following design element: lots of choices. A place for drawing. A place for painting. Musical instruments. A wardrobe hanging with costumes. Blocks. Picture books. Tubes and gears. Anything where a child can be safely let loose, joyously free to explore whatever catches her fancy. Did you see the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? If so, you may have been filled with wonder at the chocolate plant, complete with trees, lawns, and waterfalls - a totally explorable, nonlinear ecology. That's what I mean. I am focusing on artistic pursuits because kids who are trained in the arts ~ John Medina

They must be looking everywhere for you," said Tawny, stretching out her wings to their full span - which was very far indeed!
It seemed to Luna that Tawny was saying that Maria was looking for her across the whole wide world.
"Luna The Moon Pig, The Pig Who Hid ~ Suzy Davies

Mommy says, "Bedtime for You!"
So Owl says a friendly "Hoo! ~ Suzy Davies

When you write, magic happens. Doors open. People smile and the world is a better place ~ Alan Dapre

I was brought up in Zimbabwe, and there were seven of us in my family, so it was difficult to read aloud to us all. There weren't that many picture books around in the Fifties in Zimbabwe. My favourite was Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter, which was really frightening. ~ Korky Paul

I think picture books should stretch children. I think they should be full of wonderful, amazing words. ~ Jane Yolen

It struck me that when we read picture books to children, we parents, and people as a whole, do not appear in them very much, and that they are more constructed to be a world of children and animals. ~ Mamoru Hosoda

Carrying a small notebook with you always, in your pocket or purse, along with a reliable ballpoint pen will enable you to jot down spot observations and quick character sketches before the first sharp impressions fade away. You'll need all kinds of story actors, because even picture books can include a wide range of ages, relationships, occupations, and nationalities. Learn to observe and analyze swiftly, wherever you are. ~ Lee Wyndham

She would sit with picture books in her little lap before she even knew how to read, studying the writing as though all the mystery and wonder of the world were contained in the strange, indecipherable symbols. ~ Molly Ringwald

I've read way too much on the overused/misunderstood buzzwords "Show, don't tell!" that I'm convinced all novels should now be picture books ~ Michael Kroft

It wasn't the best view of the landscape around their buried bunker, but it wasn't the worst, either. In the distance, low rolling hills stood, a pretty shade of brown, like coffee mash with just the right amount of pig's milk in it. The sky above the hills was the same dull gray of his childhood and his father's childhood and his grandfather's childhood. The only moving feature on the landscape was the clouds. They hung full and dark over the hills. They roamed free like the herded beasts from the picture books. ~ Hugh Howey

It doesn't matter
how far you go;
I will love you.
Always. ~ Mamoru Suzuki

The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life. ~ Anthony Browne

She dampened her lips. "I . . . I have defenses you don't know of, and" - she gestured to the half wall revealing the kitchen beyond - "I have pepper spray in the kitchen."
"Pepper spray in the kitchen," he said tonelessly.
"All right, all right!" She dropped the bag with the box on a coffee table that held a few large picture books on the Old West and hurried into the kitchen, coming back with the pepper spray, which she stuck on a bookcase shelf next to the door. He took it down and checked the expiration date. "You should have tossed this two years ago. ~ Robin D. Owens

As a father, I understand the importance of the bond that develops through reading picture books with your child. ~ Anthony Browne

The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write ... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up. ~ Chris Van Allsburg

So little Moon Pig put her snout into the soft dandelion head, which was round, and glowing, just like the moon. She blew and blew... ~ Suzy Davies

I didn't have picture books - there weren't many around when I was a child. ~ Anthony Browne

Hey, ants!" she shouted. "Please help. Anteater is very hungry, but cannot find any food. ~ Emlyn Chand

Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at 'proper' books, which means books without pictures. ~ Anthony Browne

Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. ~ Etienne De La Boetie

Jill showed friend Kay the cute white mice.
They liked to run races for cheese.
Mice were lots of fun to play with.
Jill said, "Take Poopsie, the male one, please! ~ Melinda K. Trotter

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

Growing up, I lived in a house without art: no picture books on the shelves, no visits to museums, no posters on the bedroom wall. ~ John Burnside

What if I took the picture books that my grandmother made and snapped open the rings in every binder, let the plastic pages spill out onto the floor, and then attacked them with my scissors?

Those books, pasted together by my grandmother, year after year, replaced the cognitive exercise of memory for me. Sitting on a section of wall-to-wall carpeting, drinking the bubbling red birch beer from a tinted brown glass, I reestablished my relationships with the members of my family. This is where I put it all together and perpetuated the lies. Not malicious lies, but lies with so many years to develop that we forgot the truth because nobody rehearsed it. When Mark was sentence to sixty days in a twelve-step rehab program in 1991, he wrote an inventory of his experiences with drugs and alcohol that filled a whole notebook, and then he gave it to us to read, It was in those pages that I learned he had once tapped the powder out of horse tranquilizer capsules, melted it down, and shot it into his veins for a high that lasted fourteen days. My God, I thought, Oh my God. This is Mark's story? Okay, now put the cooked-down shot-up horse tranquilizer against the pictures in the album. What do you get? Collage. Dry made wet and introduced into the body. Cut cut cut. It's not so radical. ~ Jill Christman

Every man dies. Not every man truly lives." Sir William Wallace ~ Amanda M. Thrasher

People like dialogue. Being a part of it or reading it. Me personally, I'd rather write it. ~ Andrea L'Artiste

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

A man's action is only a picture book of his creed. ~ Arthur Helps

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

With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own. ~ Beverly Cleary

Writing a picture book is like writing 'War and Peace' in Haiku. ~ Mem Fox

My Mommy likes to wiggle And it really makes me giggle. The music keeps her moving And she's smiling as she's grooving.
She goes...Wiggle, wiggle to the left; wiggle to the right, Wiggle, wiggle, jiggle, jiggle - Dancing through the night... ~ Kathleen Gauer

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

It is perhaps one of those imponderables of life that many people declare their dislike for poetry, yet it surrounds us in the lyrics of the songs and hymns we love, the catchy advertising jingles, in picture books, and remembered snippets from Shakespeare or remembered and much loved verses. " Jeanette O'Hagan 1 May 2017 ~ Jeanette O'Hagan

On the Writing Process:
When in doubt, take it out., ~ Barbara DaCosta

Messages are the death of an honest literary transaction with children ~ Maurice Sendak

The early readers are in-between books for the kids who aren't ready for novels yet but are done with my picture books. It's really rewarding to think that they can grow up reading my books at all the different levels. ~ Grace Lin

If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times, and their parents are going to have to read it with them. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed. ~ Mark Haddon

You'll notice that my books offer great variety. Some are for adults, some for children and some for teens. There are mysteries, historical novels, picture books, love stories and stories of crisis and courage. ~ Sonia Levitin

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

Every day is a good day if we are reading a picture book. ~ Vivian Kirkfield

On the steps leading to a door
was a scrub brush that was blue.
I snatched it quick and ran for home
because it was just the thing to chew. ~ Melinda K. Trotter

Kaylee giggled as he tunneled up inside her sleeve.
Out popped his head for a quick look, then he took leave.
He enjoyed scaling up, down and around her shirt.
What a sweet, funny and adorable flirt. ~ Melinda K. Trotter

It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books. ~ Margaret Mahy

It did occur to me that certainly African-Americans are not underserved in picture books, but those books are almost all about specifically black experiences. ~ Chris Van Allsburg

Housekeeping is incredibly difficult with three kids. I'm trying to be more relaxed. You'll go insane if you try to have a picture-book house. ~ Patrick Dempsey

One day as Frieda the Fox was walking home from lunch with some friends,
she heard a noise and stopped to see if she heard the noise again.
She heard a loud banging sound, a growl, and then a thump.
She crept closer and saw a blue dumpster and a big brown furry rump! ~ Kimberly Baltz

I love writing picture books and story books because of the exciting, visual life that artists and illustrators give to them. And most of all, I love writing novels because of the inner, emotional journeys that they take me on. Hopefully, the reader comes with me! ~ Berlie Doherty

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I try to picture my books being acted out. ~ Denise Fleming

What a fatal thing in pictures, books, or human lives, is a lack of proportion. ~ Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

All really good picture books are written to be read five hundred times ~ Rosemary Wells

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

Why is this important for school success? To get along in kindergarten, your child should know information like colors, shapes, seasons, holidays, farm animals, types of transportation, fruits, and vegetables - all the basics that children are exposed to through picture books, preschool, and life itself. He will be expected to demonstrate age-appropriate social standards and behavior. If he knocks over someone's art project, he should know to apologize and help pick it up. ~ Karen Quinn

He looked all alone and so sad and so blue,
so I said, "Oh, dear Bear; there's a home here for you. ~ Ingrid Sawubona

LOSE YOURSELF IN A BOOK, FIND YOURSELF OUTSIDE ~ David Covell

I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished ... do I begin the pictures. ~ Maurice Sendak

Cornelius rose. He dried his eyes. For his spirit and will were waterproof. ~ Phil Bildner

I remember the special quiet of rainy days
when I felt that I could enter the pages
of my beautiful picture books.
Now I try to recreate that feeling of believing
that the imaginary place I'm drawing really exists.
The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope
others as well, that such places might be real. ~ Jan Brett

My goal with The Adventures of Captain Underpants was to invent a style which was almost identical to that of a picture book - in a novel format. So I wrote incredibly short chapters and tried to fill each page with more pictures than words. I wanted to create a book that kids who don't like to read would want to read. ~ Dav Pilkey

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. ~ Jonna Amato-Ocampo

I learned to read when I was three, so I skipped right over picture books and didn't learn to appreciate art in books until much later. ~ Mitali Perkins

Writing picture books is like playing Tetris with only Z-pieces. ~ Colleen A.F. Venable

Force me to choose my best book, and I always come back to 'Gorilla.' It was the first time I felt I understood what picture books could do. ~ Anthony Browne

Stay positive , smile , and don't let the buggers get you down. ~ Jon Adkin

I remember as a child scrambling among the brilliants of books or, battered with agonies, or in the spectral half-life that requires loneliness, retiring to the attic, to lie curled in a great body-molded chair in the violet-lavender light from the window. There I could study the big adze-squared beams that support the roof--see how they are mortised on into another and pined in place with oaken dowels. When it rains from rustling drip to roar on the roof, it i s a fine secure place. Then the books, tinted with light, the picture books of children grown, seeded, and gone... ~ John Steinbeck

I just did a picture book called The Wildest Brother on Earth, and you will find both of my children in there. ~ Cornelia Funke

My son craves picture books about Transformers and Ninja Turtles and the Hulk; they show one fantastic creature smashing or zapping another into smithereens on page after page. They are dull and ugly and show no interesting stories or models of conflict resolution or character building. ~ Russell Smith

[My mom] is quite the strict editor. I feel like maybe she has more of the old-school editing style, which really works in picture books, because you don't want to articulate anything in words that is already shown through the pictures. ~ Jenna Bush

Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story. ~ Philip Reeve

Nobody in my family is fancy at all. They never even ask for sprinkles. ~ Jane O'Connor

I think of writing
particularly of writing picture books
as a kind of choreography. A picture book must have pace and movement and pattern. Pictures and text should, together, create the pattern, rather than simply run parallel. ~ Beatrice Schenk De Regniers

In terms of age, I think I've covered about as wide a range as is possible, having written everything from picture books to early chapter books to middle grade novels to YA to one adult novel - and having been editor and lead writer for a magazine for retired people! ~ Bruce Coville

You are not too small. No one is ever too small to offer help. ~ Emlyn Chand

On the other couch a women sits with a young boy looking through a picture book about Babar the Elephant. When I find a magazine and I lean back to start reading it, I can see the women watching me out of the corner of her eye. She moves closer to the child and she leans over and kisses his forehead. I know why she does it and i don't blame her. ~ James Frey

I'll always write picture books - it's just what I do. I'd even do it if I wasn't being paid. ~ Debi Gliori

Gifts that are most appreciated are often associated with the country, or even better, the specific location you are from. These kinds of gifts may include coffee table picture books of your city or national parks, or mugs, t-shirts, paperweights, and so on that display your company or school logo. ~ Matthew B. Christensen

You need a theme in a picture book just as much or maybe even more than you need it in a novel. ~ Eve Bunting

Yes, every evening. Your mother enjoyed it. That evening she chose Inkheart. She always did like tales of adventure – stories full of brightness and darkness. She could tell you the names of all King Arthur's knights, and she knew everything about Beowulf and Grendel, the ancient gods and the not-quite-so-ancient heroes. She liked pirate stories, too, but most of all she loved books that had at least a knight or a dragon or a fairy in them. She was always on the dragon's side, by the way. There didn't seem to be any of them in Inkheart, but there was any amount of brightness and darkness, fairies and goblins. Your mother liked goblins as well: hobgoblins, bugaboos, the Fenoderee, the folletti with their butterfly wings, she knew them all. So we gave you a pile of picture books, sat down on the rug beside you, and I began to read. ~ Cornelia Funke

Books became my world because the world I was in was very hard. ~ Alice Walker

What madness, to love a man as something more than human! I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind. My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry. Everything that was not what my friend had been was dull and distasteful. I had heart only for sighs and tears, for in them alone I found some shred of consolation. ~ Augustine Of Hippo