Jon Scieszka Quotes

As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.

This is what I believe is most important: getting good books into the hands of kids - books that will make them want to say, 'Wow, that was great. Give me another one to read.'

I think kids will read more good books than we can possibly produce.

Let's face it: Most of us don't realize it, but we are failing our kids as reading role models. The best role models are in the home: brothers, fathers, grandfathers; mothers, sisters, grandmothers. Moms and dads, it's important that your kids see you reading. Not just books - reading the newspaper is good, too.

Whether I'm at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I'm looking forward to reading.

Overall, people are reading less.

Kids say the No. 1 reason they don't read more is that they can't find books they like. Freedom of choice is a key to getting them motivated and excited.

If a child wants to read 'Twilight' over Middlemarch, they should be encouraged - the important thing is to get them reading in the first place.

It's hard recommending books for kids, and a huge responsibility. If you get it wrong, they don't tell you they hate that particular book, they tell you they hate reading.

My suspicion is that once you have literacy in place, the readership has not changed very much.

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.

I got interested in the question of literacy because writers are always moaning about why more people don't read books.

I don't read a lot of books.

Kids think books are cool, especially when they see that people they think books are cool are reading.

I loved to read, and I think any child who loves to read will read anything, including the back of the cereal box, which I did every morning.

The big problem is just this kind of gigantic piece, of kids reading less and liking it less and so getting worse at it. It's kind of this terrible spiral: Since they're not so good at it they do less of it, get worse at it, do less of it. And it's really what I discovered five, six years ago when I started the 'Guys Read' thing.

Librarians and romance writers accomplish one mission better than anyone, including English teachers: we create readers for life - and what could be more fulfilling than that?

The funny thing is, I'm not really a big reader, not a big fan of books in the first place.

Children will not pretend to be enjoying books, and they will not read books because they have been told that these books are good. They are looking for delight.

I have never met an author who did not read voraciously as a child.

School librarians play such an enormous role in bringing children to books they are going to enjoy. It's a magic alchemy when that works.

Jeff Kinney's 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' series and Stephenie Meyer's 'Twilight' books got 49,323,701 kids reading.

One of the most memorable things I hear is when someone tells me that my books got a reluctant reader to read.

I have different books for different times of the day, let alone different seasons of the year!

I've been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember.