Quotes About Writing For Kids

#1. I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I'd written, I don't want to leave that behind.

J.K. Rowling

#2. I never thought I was writing for kids at all. It really shocked and unsettled me to hear kids were buying the books. If I'd known I was writing for kids, I might actually have spelt things out a bit more, and that would probably have killed the appeal.

Jeff Kinney

#3. Sure, it's simple writing for kids ... just as simple as bringing them up.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#4. Back when I taught middle school and wrote adult mysteries, my students often asked me why I wasn't writing for kids. I never had a good answer for them. It took me a long time to realize they were right.

Rick Riordan

#5. Part of the joy of writing for kids is that you have to have a real adventure story. You can get really involved in the fantastic in a way that perhaps you can't so much in adult fiction.

Edward Carey

#6. As a young, ambitious novelist, writing for kids never crossed my mind.

Rodman Philbrick

#7. For me, writing for kids is harder because they're a more discriminating audience. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kid's not going to do that. They will drop the book.

Rick Riordan

#8. Writing for children can be completely honest in non-cynical ways. In adult books you're required to be cynical. It embarrasses us to say positive things. You can have affection and hope in children's books, but that is out of fashion in adult fiction.

Lloyd Alexander

#9. I don't therefore know how to write for the big papers. It must be kids - students - and retired people. And the reality is they are overwhelmed with people sending in their holiday stories and bits and pieces and so on.

John Gimlette

#10. The New Kids took some hits for, you know, not writing their own music. But on a songwriting standpoint, I mean, I'd never written music before when I was in the group, ... Now the music is my music, so it's kind of like my baby, and that was a whole different experience.

Joey McIntyre

#11. It's really hard to say how long the show will last and will continue. I hope it lasts for a very long time. As long as kids watch it, anyway. But beyond this, sure, I would love to be doing film. I'd love to be doing more theater and perhaps even writing.

Steve Burns

#12. I don't for one second think about the possibility of censorship when I am writing a new book. I know I am a person who cares about kids and who cares about truth and I am guided by my own instincts, and trust them.

Lois Lowry

#13. I think I write for reluctant readers. Of course I want everyone to enjoy my books, but if the kids in the back row who normally don't pick up a book are engaged with what I'm writing, along with the kids who are big readers anyway, then I really feel like I've done my job.

Rick Riordan

#14. Kids love to be silly, they love to laugh, so I think it was natural for my kids to like the sort of books that I write - and it's the only kinds of books I'm capable of writing.

Michael Ian Black

#15. My younger brother and I have been writing together, mainly for fun, for years, but we've been improvising together since we were kids. Literally.

Ty Burrell

#16. 'Harry Potter' opened so many doors for young adult literature. It really did convince the publishing industry that writing for children was a viable enterprise. And it also convinced a lot of people that kids will read if we give them books that they care about and love.

Rick Riordan

#17. I know the exact date that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids. So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003.

Stephenie Meyer

#18. People forget how outcast 'They Might Be Giants' can be. They have a reputation for writing really deft, funny, clever melodies, and they also make a lot of music for kids, which is terrific, but when you see them in concert, they can rock the house.

John Hodgman

#19. I feel lucky that my career so far has included books for adults and books for kids. They're equally important to me, and I hope I get to continue writing both.

Greg Van Eekhout

#20. I wanted to write honest books for kids because I didn't have those when I was a kid.

Judy Blume

#21. My kids don't really like when I sing for some reason ... but they like when I play guitar. So I started writing songs just playing guitar for them.

David Pajo

#22. When I'm writing a theme song for a TV show I always think, "What would be Pavlovian where a kid would be in the kitchen, or an adult would be in the kitchen, and they hear the theme song come on and it would draw them back to the other room so that they would watch the show?"

Mark Mothersbaugh

#23. People think, Hey, I love kids, I want to write children's books. But they think children are happy. That's their first mistake. [Messinger, Jonathan. "Guilt for dinner: The Mo Willems interview." Hipsqueak. 5 May 2011. Web. 18 November 2011.]

Mo Willems

#24. My question is "when did other people give up the idea of being a poet?" You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?

William Stafford

#25. Kids are smart: don't underestimate their bull detector. Contemporary kids have access to a lot of information, so don't even try to fool them. I have never been more nervous about my research than when writing for young adults because they pick up every single error.

Isabel Allende

#26. I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The Phantom Tollbooth.

Norton Juster

#27. I'm not actually teaching any more, but I am writing pieces for schools all the time, and for kids.

Peter Maxwell Davies

#28. Teach your students real-world writing purposes, add a teacher who models his or her struggles with the writing process, throw in lots of real-world mentor texts for students to emulate, and give our kids the time necessary to enable them to stretch as writers.

Kelly Gallagher

#29. Writing for children isn't easy. Kids will abandon a story that doesn't interest, enchant, delight, thrill, or terrify them. But when you can find a way into a young reader's imagination through something as simple as words on paper, well, there's nothing more satisfying.

Kate Klise

#30. What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids, ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food.

Anne McCaffrey

#31. I could spend the rest of my life writing and drawing books for kids and be a very happy man.

Daniel Sean Kaye

#32. Alan Alda and his wife Arlene are two of the most life-affirming people I've ever met. He espoused equal rights for women while producing, writing, acting in and directing 'M*A*S*H'; he used to commute between the set and home because he didn't want to disrupt his kids' schooling.

Sanjeev Bhaskar

#33. I'm very rigid about my schedule. I sit down at 8 A.M., and the Internet blocker goes on. My standard time is 120 minutes. I'm a compulsive writer, so it reminds me to stop writing ... If I write more than that, I turn into an ogre for my kids.

Claire Cameron

#34. I cant justify taking money away from hungry kids and needy schools to pay for the Games when corporations are willing to write the checks.

Mary Lou Retton

#35. In my life, looking at other women who have been pregnant while writing, I always feel like it's kind of their most musical or the closest to themselves. I think for me it's such a validating moment, you know. I always knew I wanted to have kids, and I've been making music all my life.

Kelis

#36. Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story we're writing for our kids.

Paolo Bacigalupi

#37. Kids love me because I write stories that tell them about their capacity for evil. I'm one of the few writers who lets you cleanse yourself that way.

Ray Bradbury

#38. Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness - I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full-time.

Jennifer McMahon

#39. Now I'm doing a film festival for kids and writing a script about a kidnapped journalist in Afghanistan.

Olivia Wilde

#40. I had kids at age 47, and very late in life, and I'd been doing it for 30 straight years, writing songs, making a record and touring and starting the process right over.

Bob Seger

#41. I loved doing school musicals [as a kid], I even started at an early age to write little plays for the school to perform. I was not just keen on that, it was during that time, during the school period then from an early age, that I began to dream about acting.

George Ogilvie

#42. I don't have kids, a mortgage, or a car. That has let me hold out for the jobs I want to do, and to sit in a cold room in the winter with fingerless gloves, writing.

Alice Lowe

#43. It's a way of clearing the palate. Kids come into the classroom with all this other stuff in their hands. If they write it down for 10 minutes they become much more available for whatever it is we want to do in the class.

Joan Countryman

#44. It is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages. It is always hardest for me to write a book that has kids in it close to my kids' ages.

Jodi Picoult

#45. As for developing a writing style'I would say that I tried to copy the pacing of the old movies I loved as a kid.

Kola Boof

#46. I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books.

Ellen Potter

#47. I enjoy writing for both kids and adults, though I think I'm better at children's stories because I was a teacher for so long, and I know that audience well. The process is no different whether I'm writing for children or adults. Really, the elements of making a good story are the same.

Rick Riordan

#48. I think that's pretty crucial for it to succeed and be something more than just something you put your kid in front of and turn on the DVD. We wouldn't have got involved if it were just for little kids. We wanted to write something that works on both levels.

John Francis Daley

#49. The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old.

Natalie Babbitt

#50. If you write a kid's book only for kids, then you have failed.

Don Roff

#51. I was really inspired while I was pregnant and I wrote a whole album for my baby. I wanted to write a kids album that didn't annoy parents. I used The Beatles 'Rocky Raccoon' as sort of a starting place for my writing.

Jewel

#52. If you can write (and don't kid yourself that you can, if you can't) and you have ideas that are commercially viable and will engage the reader's interest, go for it. Make sure you have something unique to offer. I enjoy the work of writers who give you something you won't find anywhere else.

Joel McIver

#53. I'm not a parenting expert by any means, but I've been interviewing and writing about kids for almost 20 years.

Nancy Jo Sales

#54. These kids will make you cry, laugh ... They make you feel all kinds of emotions through their writings and they share a lot with me, as an instructor, that they might not normally share with other people because they are young artists and they need a platform for pulling that stuff out.

Clinton D. Powell