Christmas From Childrens Books Quotes

#1. It's very hard to be a screenwriter. I remember getting a couple of awards. I got a PEN West award a million years ago when I did Running on Empty, and I sat in the room with all these writers. They wrote everything from novels to non-fiction to children's books to journalism - any kind of writing - and I realized that there was no one in the room who would ever read anything I'd written. #Quote by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

#2. 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) #Quote by Susan Cooper

#3. He didn't mind it in the beginning, this slowness. It left him alone with himself while he fished and listened to the call of the herons, and taught Anthony to row a boat and to play baseball and soccer, while Anthony read to him from his children's books as Alexander held the fishing line. The soul was repairing itself little by little. And it was on Bethel Island, with his mother and father twenty-four hours by his side, watching over him, talking to him, playing with him, that Anthony stopped waking up with nightmares in the middle of the night and settled down to silence inside himself. And it was on Bethel Island that Alexander stopped needing ice cold baths at three in the morning - the hot sudsy dimly lit baths with her soapy hands and soapy body in the late evening sufficing. #Quote by Paullina Simons

#4. I am convinced that not only do children need children's books to fine-tune their brains, but our civilization needs them if we are not going to unplug ourselves from our collective past. #Quote by E.L. Konigsburg

#5. Librarians lend people books from the library. The best librarians are children's book librarians. #Quote by Richard Scarry

#6. The apartment was entirely, was only, for her: a wall of books, both read and unread, all of them dear to her not only in themselves, their tender spines, but in the moments or periods they evoked. She had kept some books since college that she had acquired for courses and never read - Fredric Jameson, for example, and Kant's Critique of Judgment - but which suggested to her that she was, or might be, a person of seriousness, a thinker in some seeping, ubiquitous way; and she had kept, too, a handful of children's books taken fro her now-dismantled girlhood room, like Charlotte's Web and the Harriet the Spy novels, that conjured for her an earlier, passionately earnest self, the sober child who read constantly in the back of her parents' Buick, oblivious to her brother punching her knee, oblivious to her parents' squabbling, oblivious to the traffic and landscapes pressing upon her from outside the window.

She had, in addition to her books, a modest shelf of tapes and CDs that served a similar, though narrower, function…she was aware that her collection was comprised largely of mainstream choices that reflected - whether popular or classical - not so much an individual spirit as the generic tastes of her times: Madonna, the Eurythmics, Tracy Chapman from her adolescence; Cecilia Bartoli, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Mitsuko Uchida; more recently Moby and the posthumously celebrated folk-singing woman from Washington, DC, who had died of a melanoma in her early thirties, and #Quote by Claire Messud

#7. Libraries are sanctuaries from the world and command centers onto it: here in the quiet rooms are the lives of Crazy Horse and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Hundred Years' War and the Opium Wars and the Dirty War, the ideas of Simone Weil and Lao-Tzu, information on building your sailboat or dissolving your marriage, fictional worlds and books to equip the reader to reenter the real world. They are, ideally, places where nothing happens and where everything that has happened is stored up to be remembered and relived, the place where the world is folded up into boxes of paper. Every book is a door that opens onto another world, which might be the magic that all those children's books were alluding to, and a library is a Milky Way of worlds. #Quote by Rebecca Solnit

#8. Children's books aren't textbooks. Their primary purpose isn't supposed to be "Pick this up and it will teach you this." It's not how literature should be. You probably do learn something from every book you pick up, but it might be simply how to laugh. #Quote by J.K. Rowling

#9. This is for everyone who has ever looked at the stars, or gazed from atop a hill, or across the sea and wondered ... #Quote by Tim Perkins

#10. Then began an experience that turned my life around-working on a book with a black kid as hero. None of the manuscripts I'd been illustrating featured any black kids-except for token blacks in the background. My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along. Years before I had cut from a magazine a strip of photos of a little black boy. I often put them on my studio walls before I'd begun to illustrate children's books. I just loved looking at him. This was the child who would be the hero of my book. #Quote by Ezra Jack Keats

#11. It has often been said that Christian Poles did nothing to help Jews during the war. Don't believe it. There were indeed those who turned their backs on the hounded, hungry people who came to them in desperation; there were others who did their little bit to help where they realistically could, often not without some risk to themselves; and there were those who were ready to risk their lives and to share their last meal with a fugitive. I don't believe that in these matters the Polish people in the last war were different from any others caught in a similar stranglehold. And what is more, the rescued have no right to assume that they would automatically become rescuers if roles were reversed. We simply don't know, any of us, how we would react until put to the test. And the not-knowing troubles me. You see, I don't believe as many people do that courage is a characteristic like optimism or generosity; I think of it more as a mood, like laughter or sadness, a child of the moment, which might come to any of us in certain circumstances - and desert us in others. #Quote by Christa Laird

#12. I haven't been very enthusiastic about the commercialization of children's literature. Kids should borrow books from the library and not necessarily be buying them. #Quote by Beverly Cleary

#13. It's strange: I've done so many things up until I did 'Obvious Child,' including writing children's books and making 'Marcel the Shell.' To me, the through-line is incredibly clear: it all comes from wanting to be connected to my own inner voice and not wanting to be on somebody else's agenda if that means that I can't be myself. #Quote by Jenny Slate

#14. Dany "Bring me that book I was reading last night." She wanted to lose herself in the words, in other times and other places. The fat leather-bound volume was full of songs and stories from the Seven Kingdoms. Children's stories, if truth be told; too simple and fanciful to be true history. All the heroes were tall and handsome, and you could tell the traitors by their shifty eyes. Yet she loved reading them all the same. Last night she had been reading of the three princesses in the red tower, locked away by the king for the crime of being beautiful.
When her handmaiden brought the book, dany had no trouble finding the page where she had left off, but is was no good. She found herself reading the same passage half a dozen times. "Ser Jorah gave me this book as a bride's gift, the day I we'd Khal Drogo" She played at at being a queen, yet sometimes she felt like a scared little girl. #Quote by George R R Martin

#15. Books were an antidepressant, a powerful SSRI. She'd always been one of those girls with socked feet tucked under her, her mouth slightly open in stunned, almost doped-up concentration. All written words danced in a chain for her, creating corresponding images as clear as the boy from Iran's bouncing family. She had learned to read before kindergarten, when she'd first suspected that her parents weren't all that interested in her. Then she'd kept going, plowing through children's books with their predictable anthropomorphism, heading eventually into the strange and beautiful formality of the nineteenth century, and pushing backward and forward into histories of bloody wars, into discussions of God and godlessness. What she responded to most powerfully, sometimes even physically, were novels. Once Greer read Anna Karenina for such a long, unbroken bout that her eyes grew strained and bloodshot, and she had to lie in bed with a washcloth over them as if she herself were a literary heroine from the past. Novels had accompanied her throughout her childhood, that period of protracted isolation, and they would probably do so during whatever lay ahead in adulthood. Regardless of how bad it got at Ryland, she knew that at least she would able to read there, because this was college, and reading was what you did. #Quote by Meg Wolitzer

#16. The films in 101 Movies to See Before You Grow Up are meant to be watched with your family. I hope that if I inspire you to do this even once a week, you will have spent an unforgettable hour or two taking a journey together into the limitless boundaries of imagination and creativity that only movies can take us on from the comfort of your own home. #Quote by Suzette Valle

#17. Book banning satisfied their need to feel in control of their children's lives. Those who censored were easily frightened. They were afraid of exposing their children to ideas different from their own. Afraid to answer children's questions or talk with them about sensitive subjects. #Quote by Judy Blume

#18. I came from a family of incredible storytellers, but I didn't start writing children's books until I was 41 years old. #Quote by Patricia Polacco

#19. There is a joy...in creating surprising insight into a character. The characters in my books become, for me, good friends, extended family members, or the brothers and sisters I never had. Books affect lives, especially children's lives, because children have a genuine belief in the truth of stories, the ultimate gift for the writer. It's a shared gift - from writer to reader and back again. #Quote by Patricia MacLachlan

#20. If you could get anything at all off Santa, what would it be?'
I asked for a fire engine and sweets. Bunty exclaimed in delight, 'Santa will get you that, but you and Scott will need to leave out a bowl of milk and some carrots for Rudolph.'
'Who's Rudolph?' I asked.
Bunty told me in confidence that Rudolph was Santa's reindeer and that he helped pull all the children's toys in the world over the snow. I couldn't wait.
In readiness for Rudolph, Scott, Martha, Bunty and I picked out four of the biggest carrots from a bag in the kitchen, which we then washed. We found a big bowl that we used to lick the cream out of, which we filled with milk. We put the bowl along with the carrots under the Christmas tree, with all the other children's offerings. Then Bunty and Martha came in and washed us, put us to bed and read us a story, before kissing us good night. On their way out they said, 'When you wake up, Santa will have been'. #Quote by Stephen Richards

#21. Ethan got some books out of an old trunk. They were history books, some passed down from his great-grandfather Tom through his grandfather Jeb and father Andrew. Ethan expected that he'd pass them on to his own child, one day. History and family trees had always been very important to the Fortner family. #Quote by C.G. Faulkner

#22. I always wanted to be a children's author, and I have a really big library of children's books. All the ones from when I was little, they are just so beautiful. I read kids' books, and they calm me down. #Quote by Jenny Slate

#23. I'm not putting my faith or life in anyone's hands. All that ever got me was screwed, and my ass is currently sore from it. (Wren)
Nice imagery there, tiger. Graphic. Ever think of writing children's books? (Fury) #Quote by Sherrilyn Kenyon

#24. I gave up writing children's books. I wanted to escape from them as I had once wanted to escape from 'Punch': as I have always wanted to escape. In vain. #Quote by A.A. Milne

#25. I came to New York to see what I could see - that's from a children's book, isn't it? - and to find the living part. #Quote by Edie Sedgwick

#26. Recently, an internationally renowned writer for children commented about the Council [on Interracial Books for Children, Inc.] to me: "Of course, we should all be more tender and understanding toward the aged and we should work to shrive ourselves of racism and sexism, but when you impose guidelines like theirs on writing, you're strangling the imagination. And that means that you're limiting the ability of children to imagine. If all books for them were 'cleansed' according to these criteria, it would be the equivalent of giving them nothing to eat but white bread."
"To write according to such guidelines," this story teller continued, "is to take the life out of what you do. Also the complexity, the ambivalence. And thereby the young reader gets no real sense of the wonders and terrors and unpredictabilities of living. Paradoxically, censors like the council clamor for 'truth' but are actually working to flatten children's reading experiences into the most misleading, simplistic kinds of untruth."

("Any Writer Who Follows Anyone Else's Guidelines Ought to Be in Advertising" (1977), from Beyond Fact: Nonfiction for Children and Young People, 1982) #Quote by Nat Hentoff

#27. I can still remember. I was ill, and I was seven, and my father didn't want me to just read children's books. He came with Conan Doyle. I tried, and I liked it. I think the first I read was 'The Sign of the Four'; 'Study in Scarlet' was the next one. Then I guess I stayed home a few extra days from school to read. #Quote by Henning Mankell

#28. Magic happens when the wand of language strikes a stone and makes it melt, touches a spindle and turns it into gold, or taps a trunk and makes it fly. By drawing on a syntax of enchantment that conjures fluidity, ethereality, flimsiness, and transparency, writers turn solidity into resplendent airy lightness to produce miracles of linguistic transubstantiation.

What is the effect of that beauty? How do readers respond to words that create that beauty? In a world that has discredited that particular attribute and banished it from high art, beauty has nonetheless held on to its enlivening power in children's books. It draws readers in, then draws them to understand the fictional worlds it lights up. #Quote by Maria Tatar

#29. Another danger is that - as is already happening to some extent - authors and editors run scared and go to absurd lengths to avoid giving offence. (An American editor rejected Polar, a picture book about a toy polar bear which is published in England by Andre Deutsch, on the ground that the text, written by Elaine Moss, states explicitly that the bear is white). A demand to avoid stereotypes can easily become in effect a demand for a different stereotype: for instance that girls should always be shown as strong, brave and resourceful, and that mothers should always have jobs and never, never wear an apron. And books written to an approved formula, or with deliberate didactic aim, do not often have the breath of life. Some members of women's groups in North America have published their own anti-sexist books, featuring such characters as fire-fighting girls or boys who learn to crochet. Good luck to them; but those I have seen are far below professional standard.

("Are Children's Books Racist and Sexist?" from Only Connect, 2nd ed., 1980) #Quote by John Rowe Townsend

#30. 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." #Quote by Jan Brett

#31. Sadly, history shows us that people literally scrambled their children's brains with heavy exposure to screens at young ages. Developing primate brains are wired to interact with others in a real environment, learning the enormous range of human behaviours from copying the people they love and trust, not staring mindlessly at images. #Quote by EXO Books

#32. 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. #Quote by Alberto Manguel

#33. Aside from wanting to write cracking good books that turn children into lifelong readers, I really want to create stories that enable kids to LOOK at the world around them. To see it for what it is, with wide open, wondering eyes. Our mass media is so horribly skewed. It presents this idea of 'normalcy' which excludes and marginalises so many for an idea of commercial viability which is really nothing but blinkered prejudice. People who are black and Asian and Middle Eastern and Hispanic, people who are gay or transgendered or genderqueer, people who have disabilities, disfigurements or illnesses - all have this vision of a world which does not include them shoved down their throats almost 24-7, and they're told 'No one wants to see stories about people like you. Films and TV shows about people like you won't make money. Stories about straight, white, cisgendered, able-bodied people are universal and everyone likes them. You are small and useless and unattractive and you don't matter.'

My worry is that this warped version of 'normal' eventually forms those very same blinkers on children's eyes, depriving them of their ability to see anyone who isn't the same as them, preventing them from developing the ability to empathise with and appreciate and take joy in the lives and experiences of people who are different from them. If Shadows on the Moon - or anything I write - causes a young person to look at their own life, or the life of another, and think, 'Maybe being d #Quote by Zoe Marriott