Children S Literature Quotes

“A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”
― Astrid Lindgren

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”
― John Rogers

“Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“She asked where he lived.

Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony.”
― Roald Dahl, Danny the Champion of the World

“Don’t just teach your children to read…
Teach them to question what they read.
Teach them to question everything.”
― George Carlin

“In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child's need for quietness is the same today as it has always been--it may even be greater--for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.”
― Margaret Wise Brown

“I'm planting a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots.”
― Andrea Koehle Jones, The Wish Trees: How Planting Trees Can Help Make the World a Better Place

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”
― Rudine Sims Bishop

“A Wasn’t just isn't. He just isn't present. But you… You ARE YOU! And, now isn't that pleasant!”
― Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!

“In the great green room, there was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of a cat jumping over the moon...”
― Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon

“One of my rules is never to look sideways at what other people are doing but instead, do what I feel is right.”
― Annie Bryant, Worst Enemies/Best Friends

“I don't think I'm essentially interested in children's books. I'm interested in writing, and in pictures. I'm interested in people and in children because they are people.”
― Margaret Wise Brown

“As Hagrid had said, what would come would come and he would have to meet it when it did.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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

“People didn't make life, so they can't destroy it. Even if we were to wipe out every bit of life in the world, we can't touch the place life comes from. Whatever made the plants and animals and people spring up in the first place will always be there, and life will spring up again.”
― Jeanne DuPrau, The People of Sparks

“It was not really Saturday night, at least it may have been, for they had long lost count of the days; but always if they wanted to do anything special they said this was Saturday night, and then they did it.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“There is a tiger in my room,' said Frances.
'Did he bite you?' said Father.
'No,' said Frances.
'Did he scratch you?' said Mother.
'No,' said Frances.
'Then he is a friendly tiger,' said Father. 'He will not hurt you. Go back to sleep.”
― Russell Hoban, Bedtime for Frances

“Oh, yes," nodded Pollyanna, emphatically. He [her father] said he felt better right away, that first day he thought to count 'em. He said if God took the trouble to tell us eight hundred times [in the Bible] to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it - SOME.”
― Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna

“Only where children gather
is there any real chance of fun.”
― Mignon McLaughlin

“Children may not understand all that's happening below the surface of a story. It doesn't matter. Because even though they may not be able to define or verbalize it, they sense there's something more than meets the eye; on an almost subliminal level, they're aware of a richness of texture, or meaning and emotion -- a richness that, in a great book, is inexhaustible. And the child may well come back to it again and again, perhaps long after he's stopped being a child.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“...those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child.”
― Katherine Paterson

“Be generous with your smile and try not to frown.
And you will see my children; your smile will never let you down ☺”
― Benny Bellamacina, The King of Rhyme

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

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

“None of the seven is really good, for the excellent reason that Australian children never are.”
― Ethel Turner, Seven Little Australians

“Only sweet people with good virtues can go to fairyland. Those who treat others meanly and without respect can never go there.”
― Janaki Sooriyarachchi, Emirosy

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

“Generally speaking, all true children's stories make promises to their readers. Here you are, they say, unhandy and short, and there is a big world that one day will be yours. Listen to how it happened for Cinderella once upon a time, and Jack with his beanstalk, and Aladdin with his lamp.”
― John Goldthwaite

“Books don't go out of fashion with children. They just go out of fashion with adults and publishers.”
― Maurice Sendak, Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures