Jennifer A. Nielsen Quotes

I'm just trying to get kids motivated to be readers by connecting them with a book they like.

Every generation likes to think that children don't read as much as they used to when they were young! You listen to some adults saying they were going around reading 'Ulysses' when they were seven or eight! I think children are voracious readers if you give them the right books and if you make those books accessible to them.

If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.

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.

The best way to get kids reading more is to give them books that they'll gobble up - and that will make them ask for another.

As a writer, you should care about reluctant readers. You want these kids to feel like books are amazing and cool and that they're an escape.

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

Of course, I've always read. I started when I was four years old and just didn't stop. I read all the time.

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

I don't think the problem is that people don't read enough mystery books, but that people don't read.

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.

We want a book to be a book. We'll have all the interactive bells and whistles but our intent is to engage young people in reading, not to show them a movie.

I don't believe in lecturing people. It's much more effective to present reading as a fun, rewarding pastime.

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

Labeling is not the best way to get young people to deeply engage in reading.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

As a children's author, you get to advocate for reading and writing in general, in a way an adult author might not be able to. It's a really interesting dance we do to get literature into the hands of young people and to help them to become literate and become readers; we want them to grow up reading and continue to do so when they're adults.

I think the biggest thing, where my passionate-ness comes from, is that I love reading, and it is something that I really care about.

What I want is to try and get across the idea that reading for pleasure is so beneficial. And turn children on who have maybe been switched off reading or never found a love of it in the first place.

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.

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 have a great deal of sympathy for reluctant readers because I was one. I would do anything to avoid reading. In my case, it wasn't until I was 13 and discovered the 'Lord of the Rings' that I learned to love reading.

I am not a big reader to begin with.

I never stopped reading.

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