Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

if a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child.

I never set out to write books for children. I don't have a feeling that I'm gonna save children or my life is devoted.

People had been writing to me and saying, "Can you write something for children?" I felt I couldn't quite do it myself because I never had children.

There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.

I began attempting to write for children under the mistaken assumption that writing for children was easy.

A lot of people worry much too much about what their children are reading... If a child picks up a book and reads something she has a question about, if she can go to her parents, great. Or else they will read right over it. It won't mean a thing. They are very good, I think, at monitoring what makes them feel uncomfortable. If something makes them feel uncomfortable they will put it down.

Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.... Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.

What should a good children’s book be like? If you ask me, I can tell you after thinking long and hard: It must be good.

There are some things that are more appropriate to a children's than an adult book but there's a huge overlapping area and most kids read an age group up anyway.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

There's some things that you wouldn't tackle in a children's book because it would be beyond, not the mental capabilities, but the experience of someone under the age of say ten or eleven to encompass. But that field is smaller than you might think. They can easily cope with death and things like that; they know about it and it's a subject that often preoccupies them.

A children's book is the perfect place where young readers can understand the world because they can take a deep breath and look at it and imagine and contemplate while they're looking at.

I have a passion for children's literature. Young adult literature. I love it. I've always loved it.

It certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.

Every novelist should write something for children at least once in his lifetime.

If you are writing children's books, you need to be a ruthless killer.

For me, a good children's book is a good children's book is a good children's book.

Even though I have this solid career in picture books, I've not only been thinking about kids - because I don't think that much about children; I'm not a child educator; I'm just a former child.

I am frustrated by celebrities who decide to write children's books because they think it's easy. That drives me crazy. It's frustrating because it's unfair to children. Because they'll get a lot of attention, they'll get a lot of marketing budget and so on just because they're a celebrity - the Madonnas, the Ricky Gervaises, the Russell Brands.

I am writing my second novel for children for Simon and Schuster.

Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.

He is a writer for the ages, the ages of four to eight.

"Eight Days of Luke" was refused by another confused publisher on the grounds that children shouldn't strike matches. When my agent pointed out that David in the book was twelve years old, the publisher said that he was striking matches to summon the devil, then, and this couldn't be allowed.

The novels that get praised in the NY Review of Books aren't worth reading. Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best and only literature of our times.