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Children S Literature Quotes

Browse 124 quotes about Children S Literature.

Children S Literature Quotes

“Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the Ogpu and the atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. Nor do most of us find that violence and bloodshed, in a story, produce any haunting dread in the minds of children. As far as that goes, I side impenitently with the human race against the modern reformer. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book. Nothing will persuade me that this causes an ordinary child any kind or degree of fear beyond what it wants, and needs, to feel. For, of course, it wants to be a little frightened.”

ChildrenFearCourageChildren S BooksChildren S Literature
Book:On Three Ways of Writing for Children
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“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.”

ChildrenFeelingsFearImaginationFairy TalesRolling StonesIncestChildren S LiteratureOedipus ComplexTraditional Tales
Author:Maurice Sendak
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“In describing a fairy-story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: ‘this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty’. But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that began thus: ‘this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy’; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate.”

ChildrenAgeImaginationFantasyFantasy FictionChildren S BooksChildren S LiteratureTolkienPatronizing
Author:J.R.R. Tolkien
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“[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.”

ChildrenFeelingsFearFantasyEmotionsChildren S LiteratureYoung Minds At Play
Author:Maurice Sendak
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“When I think of the children’s books I love best, I realize that they’re written on a great many different levels. Now the first level is story. A good children’s book must hold the reader’s interest. It must be first and foremost a good story that will make the reader keep wanting to go on turning the pages. But underneath that good story is buried treasure. No one person will find all of the treasure, but each will discover special joys.”

JoyReadingTreasureStoryChildren S Literature
Book:Madeleine L'Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life
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“A child s a special possession from God.”

ChildhoodCreationBlessedGiftPregnancyChildCreative ProcessPrayer QuotesBlessingsParents And ChildrenTeenage LoveChildbirthChildren S BooksParenting QuotesParenting AdvicePrayer LifeBlessed LifeBlessings QuotesChildren S LiteratureChildhood AbuseAnswers To PrayersAnswered PrayerParental LoveParenting TeensBlessing Of The LordPrayerful HabitsGift Of LifeBirthdaysBirthday QuotesPrayers AnsweredPrayers Of The HeartTeenagers And ParentsTeen FantasyBirth MotherGift Of GodParenting HumorCreation Of GodSpecial Creation
Book:Think Great: Be Great!
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“If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults. They will, of course, put more in and get more out than children can. Then, as a branch of a genuine art, children may hope to get fairy-stories fit for them to read and yet within their measure; as they may hope to get suitable introductions to poetry, history, and the sciences. Though it may be better for them to read some things, especially fairy-stories, that are beyond their measure rather than short of it. Their books like their clothes should allow for growth, and their books at any rate should encourage it.”

ReadingLiteratureGrowing UpFairy TalesMaturationChildren S LiteratureFairytalesFairy StoriesChildrens LiteratureJuvenile Fiction
Book:The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
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“It was all beginning to run together in the back of Eleanor's mind, and the things that had probably really happened were confused with the things that probably hadn't. And every day everything in her whole past life - the real things and the imaginary things - was being pushed farther and farther back, because going to high school was so enormous, so vast! so different from all of Eleanor's life before. The milling crowds in the hall between classes, all those jostling elbows and swollen shoulders and bosoms, all those enormous hands and feet, they pushed and thumped and shoved at Eleanor's childhood, until there was no room anymore for anything but now, right now, a hurrying rushing now that was just incredibly thrilling, or absolutely rotten and just disgusting, this heaving present moment, right now.”

RealityImaginationGrowing UpHigh SchoolChildren S Literature
Book:The Fledgling
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“This is where the pivotal events of my childhood unfolded, while I ate banana and root beer Popsicles, two by two, tucking the sticks neatly under the skirt of the chair. It's where Sunnybank Lad met Lady, Ken met his friend Flicka, Atlanta burned, Manderley burned, Lassie came home, Jim ran away, Alice got small, Wilbur got big, David Copperfield was born, Beth died, and, on an endless gloomy winter afternoon, Jody shot his yearling.”

Growing UpChildren S Literature80 S
Book:In Zanesville
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“Fairytales teach children that the world is fraught with danger, including life-threatening danger; but by being clever (always), honest (as a rule, but with common-sense exceptions), courteous (especially to the elderly, no matter their apparent social station), and kind (to anyone in obvious need), even a child can succeed where those who seem more qualified have failed. And this precisely what children most need to hear. To let them go on believing that the world is safe, that they will be provided for and achieve worthwhile things even if they remain stupid, shirk integrity, despise courtesy, and act only from self-interest, that they ought to rely on those stronger, smarter, and more able to solve their problems, would be the gravest disservice: to them, and to society as a whole. -On the Supposed Unsuitability of Fairytales for Children”

ChildrenLife LessonsMoralsRaising ChildrenChildren S BooksChildren S LiteratureFairytales
Author:J. Aleksandr Wootton
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“There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen]." "Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations… like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images…" "What is this one obsession?" "I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it." "There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'" "Inside the rain?" "When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain… as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well." "It's strange you say that," Maurice answers, "because rain has become one of the potent images of my new book. It sort of scares me that you mentioned that line. Maybe that's what rain means. It's such an important ingredient in this new work, and I've never understood what it meant. There was a thing about me and rain when I was a child: if I could summon it up in one sentence, I'd be happy to. It's such connected tissue…”

RainObsessionChildren S LiteratureThemes
Book:Pipers at the Gates of Dawn: The Wisdom of Children's Literature
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“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.”

ChildrenChildren S Literature
Author:Lloyd Alexander
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“For I need not remind such an audience as this that the neat sorting out of books into age-groups, so dear to publishers, has only a very sketchy relation with the habits of any real readers. Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table.”

ChildrenReadingFantasyBooksReading BooksEscapismChildren S BooksChildren S LiteratureReading HabitsJoy Of ReadingFairy Tales For AdultsAge GroupsMature ReadersReading Age
Book:Of This and Other Worlds
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