Top 100 Children's Reading Quotes
#1. Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.
Dr. Seuss
#3. I think sometimes parents and teachers can push children away from reading by telling them it's something they must do, the same way they must eat their greens and must pass their exams in school. Poppycock! Read or don't read - that's your call.
Darren Shan
#4. Reading is one of the best ways to bond with your child. Bond this Christmas with "It's Not About You, Mr. Santa Claus
Soraya Diase Coffelt
#5. As a children's minister, I always believed that I was an evangelist, and at the end of the book, there's a simple prayer that, whoever's reading the book could accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior
Soraya Diase Coffelt
#6. And all you can do is just read," she said. She raised her voice an screamed, "You just read and read and read!" Then she threw herself down on the table and wept.
Tove Jansson
#7. There have been two areas identified as being vital to reading - and that's for very young children between the ages of one month and five years and for teenagers. I've been trying to find ways of approaching both groups.
Walter Dean Myers
#8. My mum was a children's librarian, so I spent a lot of time in the library. My reading life, because of my mum's work, was evenly split between American, Canadian, Australian and British authors.
Eleanor Catton
#9. Three hundred years from now children will be learning about a lost art that has the ability to:
Enrich minds,
Increase intelligence,
Reduce stress
Increase knowledge
Increase concentration
IT'S CALLED READING
Steven Aitchison
#10. I don't think people cry reading 'Midnight's Children,' but a lot of people seem to cry watching the movie.
Salman Rushdie
#11. There's a different flavor to children's literature you read after you grow up than there was reading it as a child. Things that were sweet as a child become bitter once you grow up.
Mizuki Nomura
#12. Children's and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we get. I think that's why so many adults read YA: we're never done coming of age.
Betsy Cornwell
#13. I'm wondering what to read next." Matilda said. "I've finished all the children's books.
Roald Dahl
#14. It's okay to dress up like another person, but never try to be someone else. Just try to be yourself, because that's what makes you special. Oh, and watch out if a dragon ever starts to dance ballet.
Jeff Hutchins
#15. Want to get your kids to read more? Try making books easily accessible. Put them where kids can easily reach and don't make them off limits. (within reason)
Melanie Kirk
#16. Childhood is the time and children's books are the place for powerful emotions, powerful language, powerful art ... There is no room for cutesy books, dull books, or books that talk down. Children are not inferior. They may be small in stature but not in what they feel, think, listen, and see.
Betsy Hearne
#17. Ocean waves gently rock the boat,
As if to the tune of a lullaby.
She sits still as the boat silently floats
Under the infinite blue sky.
Rachel Lewis
#18. Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them - all of these further a child's brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months.
T. Berry Brazelton
#19. Reading makes all other learning possible. We have to get books into our children's hands early and often.
Barack Obama
#20. Literature has the ability to open up a whole new world to children, but we need to have a share in helping them to find that door and open it with them. Let's set the example and help to foster this love of reading in our little ones.
Carmela Dutra
#21. Just a little every day That's the way Children learn to read and write Bit by bit and mite by mite.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
#22. I think the closest thing to a time machine that I've ever found is the Children's section of a library.
AnnaMarie Ralph
#23. It actually got me upset reading about adopted children. They become junkies or criminals or actors. I wanted to write a book from the children's point of view.
Michael Nyqvist
#24. The secret of keeping young is to read children's books. You read the books they write for little children and you'll keep young. You read novels, philosophy, stuff like that and it makes you feel old.
John Cheever
#25. A fortress built long ago,
Walls made timeless by historic glory.
The small girl in the boat slows,
To listen to its story.
Rachel Lewis
#26. Want to inspire your kids to read more? Try giving them kids some money to spend just on a book. Take them to a bookstore and let them browse and pick out one book that they will love. Or try going to a local library for a few hours and just let your kids sift through books that interest them.
Melanie Kirk
#27. Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.
Michael Morpurgo
#28. Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.
C.S. Lewis
#29. Every book is a children's book if the kid can read!
Mitch Hedberg
#30. So I ask you: whose job is it in this country to wake up comatose parents? Someone better do it soon because knowing television's potential for harm and keeping that knowledge to ourselves instead of sharing it with parents amounts to covering up a land mine on a busy street.
Jim Trelease
#31. I learned to read from Mrs. Augusta Baker, the children's librarian ... If that was the only good deed that lady ever did in her life, may she rest in peace. Because that deed saved my life, if not sooner, then later, when sometimes the only thing I had to hold on to was knowing I could read.
Audre Lorde
#32. Much of my reading time over the last decade and a half has been spent reading aloud to my children. Those children's bedtime rituals of supper, bath, stories, and sleep have been a staple of my life and some of the best, most special times I can remember.
Louise Brown
#33. Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children. It's not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.
Michael Morpurgo
#34. People interested in museums as real educational environments, parents interested in their children's education, and people seeking to find themselves in a positive way could all benefit from reading this book. by Associate Dean Engineering, Michigan State University
Ronald Rosenberg
#35. The home is the child's first school, the parent is the child's first teacher, and reading is the child's first subject.
Barbara Bush
#37. There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great.
Denise Mina
#38. I got hit by the bug of reading - not via a person, but via the one-room library in our small town. I remember that the children's books were in the right-hand corner near the floor. Often when I went there, I was the only visitor.
Anita Shreve
#39. In my experience, adults rarely bother reading the reviews of children's books and almost never read the books themselves - particularly if they don't have children.
Meg Rosoff
#40. I hope you are reading to your children, out loud. That's much better than watching television, much better. They won't get very much out of television except some bad thoughts.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#41. (Theodore) Roosevelt confessed early fascination with "girls'stories" such as Little Man and Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#42. Oh, Mama," I said. "What if I don't live that long?" My mother didn't hesitate one second. "By hook or by crook, you will. Having children only increases your grip on the world. It's like reading a thriller. You can't put it down because you have to know how the story turns out.
Jo-Ann Mapson
#43. I've been writing an ongoing letter to my children since they were born, full of recollections of their childhoods. I've filled two journals. It's a great thing to do as a mother - you forget a lot as you go along, but reading over what you've written brings all the memories back.
Tory Burch
#44. I think that children's books should be censored not for references to sex but for references to diseases. I mean, who didn't think after reading 'Madeline' that they were going to get appendicitis?
Roz Chast
#45. As night falls silently all around,
She carefully turns the last page.
Rachel Lewis
#46. If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children's books suddenly turn up very high on the list.
Laura Miller
#47. And I believe that public broadcasting has an important trust with the American people, it's an intimate medium of television, and that we can do reading and language development for young children without getting into human sexuality.
Margaret Spellings
#48. It's our(As The Stars of the Sky Foundation, Inc.) passion and joy to read to children and improve literacy, as well as teach others about charity and the impact they can have in a child's life.
Soraya Diase Coffelt
#49. Reading aloud and talking about what we're reading sharpens children's brains. It helps develop their ability to concentrate at length, to solve problems logically, and to express themselves more easily and clearly.
Mem Fox
#50. It's kind of sad, the way we've turned the entertainment of reading into a kind of psychic broccoli - something to feel guilty about if you don't force it on your face-making children while dutifully consuming a few token florets yourself.
Lynn Coady
#51. And all of Laura's stuff, what they wrote originally wasn't as good and Constance wound up doing that herself. That was all her stuff, reading to the child, because she had children herself and that's what she would have done.
William Devane
#52. Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.
Peter S. Jennison
#53. My first novel - the novel I wrote before 'Midnight's Children' - feels, to me, now, very - I mean, I get embarrassed when I see people reading it. You know, there are some people who, bizarrely, like it. Which I'm, you know, I'm happy for.
Salman Rushdie
#54. When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.
Mem Fox
#55. Some children were lucky enough to have their Potter novels banned by witch-hunting school boards and micromanaging ministers. Is there any greater job than a book you're not allowed to read, a book you could go to hell for reading?
Ann Patchett
#56. If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading, too. That pattern held fast across very different countries and different levels of family income. Kids could see what parents valued, and it mattered more than what parents said.
Amanda Ripley
#57. Although Lewis Carroll thought of The Hunting of the Snark as a nonsense ballad for children, it is hard to imagine - in fact one shudders to imagine - a child of today reading and enjoying it.
Martin Gardner
#58. I grew up reading 19th-century novels and late Victorian children's books, so I try for a good story full of coincidence and error, landscape and weather. However, the world was radically changed during my lifetime, and I tell of that battering as best I can.
Fanny Howe
#59. For some reason, when people meet me and find out I'm a writer they always ask if I write children's books. Um ... please don't let your kids read my books. Well, unless your kids are in their 30s or something ... then yeah, they're old enough. LOL
Michelle M. Pillow
#60. Reading with my children is incredibly important to me and a wonderful way to spend time together as a family, exploring magical worlds through books and stories.
Frank Lampard
#61. Everywhere I go, kids walk around not with books under their arms, but with radios up against their heads. Children can't read or write, but they can memorize whole albums.
Jesse Jackson
#62. Reading is my passion and my escape since I was 5 years old. Overall, children don't realize the magic that can live inside their own heads. Better even then any movie.
Eckhart Tolle
#63. Through reading the scriptures, we can gain the assurance of the Spirit that that which we read has come of God for the enlightenment, blessing, and joy of his children.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#64. Again, again ... " really means "We must love each other, you and I, if this one story, told and retold, is all we need." Reading again isn't about repeating yourself; it's about offering fresh proof of a love that never tires.
Daniel Pennac
#65. I think children love reading, and they will make time for it if we put the right books into their hands. And I hope I get the chance to keep being one of the people that writes them.
Rick Riordan
#66. If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don't have to say anything. Be friendly and then go do
your best. That will make you special, too!
Jeff Hutchins
#67. The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ...
Bruno Bettelheim
#68. My idea of a productive day, as both a child and an adult, was reading for hours and staring out the window.
Gail Caldwell
#69. Readers have told me that their children have learned to read after years of struggle after starting to read Garfield's comic strip and many people who have moved to the United States have said that they, too, learned English by reading Garfield.
Jim Davis
#70. I believe we should spend less time worrying about the quantity of books children read and more time introducing them to quality books that will turn them on to the joy of reading and turn them into lifelong readers.
James Patterson
#71. As parents, the most important thing we can do
is read to our children early and often. Reading
is the path to success in school and life. When
children learn to love books, they learn to love
learning.
Laura Bush
#72. I graduated from my Master of Fine Arts program for writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Of course, for a master's program, you have to do a ton of reading. I would get up, usually around 5:30, to do my reading; otherwise, I would fall behind.
Lisa Papademetriou
#73. I always feel like my book is a success when I see a child reading it, and they have their pointer finger out, and they kind of keep their place as they look all around the page. I've always been impressed by how children are so observant.
Jan Brett
#74. If the parents are too busy to read, it's a safe bet the children will feel the same way. Set aside time for family reading each night. It doesn't matter so much what the kids read, as long as you provide them space for reading and a sense that it is a valuable part of your daily routine.
Rick Riordan
#75. My love of reading and the English language is something given to me by my parents, and I've passed it on to my children.
Corin Tucker
#76. We measure the success of schools not by the kinds of human beings they promote but by whatever increases in reading scores they chalk up. We have allowed quantitative standards, so central to the adult economic system, to become the principal yardstick for our definition of our children's worth.
Kenneth Keniston
#77. Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene.
Mark Haddon
#78. I read a great deal as a child. A lot of children go through a phase of reading in a literally voracious way. It is their primary imaginative activity. Maybe that's an experience which is not so common any more with the presence of television in every home.
J.M. Coetzee
#79. My best ideas come to me at unexpected moments, like when I'm reading children's books to my kids (the pictures inspire me), shopping, driving somewhere, seeing different things.
Mary Engelbreit
#80. Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage
Harper Lee
#81. Reading with children is an enormous gift to them. It's a great honor to invite children to read with adults.
Henri Nouwen
#82. As children we read to escape - to enter fantasy worlds where a bespectacled boy can discover he's a wizard or a brave girl can find a magical passage through a wardrobe. But we also read to find reflections of ourselves.
Chelsey Philpot
#83. The public library my parents took me to in Fort Worth had the children's section next to the SF/F section, so I was reading adult SF/F at a very young age.
Martha Wells
#84. I don't read young adult or children's books, now that my grandchildren are beyond the age of my reading to them. I read reviews, and so I'm aware of what's out there. But I tend not to read the books.
Lois Lowry
#85. I didn't start working on children's books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children's floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed.
Kate DiCamillo
#86. Reading is like breathing in and writing is like breathing out, and storytelling is what links both: it is the soul of literacy. The most powerful tool that we have to strengthen literacy is often the most underused and overlooked, and that is a child's own stories.
Pam Allyn
#87. I like to read fiction, and I particularly enjoy reading young adult fiction. But I also read children's books, adult books, current authors, and classics, but I like fiction the most.
James Howe
#88. I couldn't comprehend why she still hadn't stopped him because it's clearly every mother's responsibility to protect her children. After all, that's the trust that bonds a mother and her child together, forever
Veronika Gasparyan
#89. I guess I never grew up. I was still reading kids' books in high school and college. I was always interested in writing or illustrating children's books, and I started collecting out-of-print books when I was about 10 years old.
Michael Patrick Hearn
#90. Censors never go after books unless kids already like them. I don't even think they know to go after books until they know that children are interested in reading this book, therefore there must be something in it that's wrong.
Judy Blume
#91. There's no such thing as a kid who hates reading. There are kids who love reading, and kids who are reading the wrong books.
James Patterson
#92. 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
#93. A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.
C.S. Lewis
#94. Differences in reading ability between five-year olds and eight-year olds are caused primarily by the older children's possessing more knowledge, not by the differences in their memory capacities, reasoning abilities, or control of eye movements.
E.D. Hirsch Jr.
#95. Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.
A. S. W. Rosenbach
#96. When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.
Paula Fox
#97. ~Reading a book is like looking through a window!
Zetta Hupf
#98. Reading aloud with children is known to be the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills they will eventually require for learning to read.
Marilyn Jager Adams
#99. We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed.
Lawrence Clark Powell
#100. I prefer to write books for children instead of reading them. But I do strongly believe in childhood and in respecting childhood innocence. I don't like books for children that deal with adult themes.
Philip Kerr
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
