Jenna Bush Quotes

I love picture books. I think some of the best people in children's books are the ones who create their own picture books. I wish I could say I'm one of them, but I'm not.

Why did Ted Geisel end up writing and illustrating for young minds? He has specific imagery in the book, and we never would have moved beyond the discussion phase, if we couldn't have found an expression for The Lorax, dimensionally, that was true to the soul of what comes through in his simple line drawings, on the page.

Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older.

I create books for six-year-olds. I don't know why that time of my life was so important to me, but no matter what I draw, it always looks like it comes from a children's book. I can't resist. I'll set out to paint a serious picture then think, "Well, maybe there would be a little bunny in that corner."

Remember picture books are the closest form of writing to a poem. Even though they don't have to rhyme, they must be poetic. They must be written so the worst actress can read with comfort and expression.

A good picture book can almost be whistled. ... All have their own melodies behind the storytelling.

I hope to encourage more children to discover and love reading, but I want to focus particularly on the appreciation of picture books…. Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.

There's the excitement of adding color, which I didn't know anything about until 1997 or so, when I did my first picture book. So, the kid's book in particular have been exciting for me because it forced me to go back to the work I loved as a young boy reading Sunday's supplements and comics in the Sunday papers when I was six, seven, eight, nine. And number of which have been in wonderful collections, beautifully reproduced.

'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' is my first book, and it's the fulfillment of a life-long dream. I had always wanted to be a cartoonist, but I found that it was very tough to break into the world of newspaper syndication. So I started playing with a style that mixed cartoons and 'traditional' writing, and that's how 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' was born.

The great thing about making picture books is that you can make absolutely anything you want happen. It's a bit like making a film, but you don't need lots of money for actors and costumes - you just need pens, paper, and your imagination.

I love picture books - with picture books, you can use words and pictures as a double act, even tell two different versions of a story at the same time.

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales.

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.

Long before 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid', 'Dork Diaries', and the graphic novel explosion, only a small press like Tricycle was willing to take a risk on such an innovative format.

Roald Dahl worked with other illustrators, but it was only when he teamed up with Quentin Blake that the chemistry began to fizz. Quentin Blake is Britain's greatest living illustrator and has that special talent all the great illustrators have, of unobtrusive brilliance.

I hadn't thought specifically about doing graphic novels until a couple of my friends got contracts for them. Then I started picturing how various of my stories or poems would work in an illustrated format and thinking how cool that would be.

What excites me about picture books is the gap between pictures and words. Sometimes the pictures can tell a slightly different story or tell more about the story, about how someone is thinking or feeling.

Balancing an illustrator and author can be tricky, but I was an illustrator mostly before I wrote my books.

I make no claim to be an authority on writing or illustrating for children.

The Caldecott Award has allowed me to keep doing what I'm doing for some time longer, for which I am ever grateful.

If you would ask my mom what books I liked growing up, I liked Dr. Seuss.

To me, this is one of the great things about writing kids' books: the illustrations.

Telling stories with visuals is an ancient art. We've been drawing pictures on cave walls for centuries. It's like what they say about the perfect picture book. The art and the text stand alone, but together, they create something even better. Kids who need to can grab onto those graphic elements and find their way into the story.

My goal with The Adventures of Captain Underpants was to invent a style which was almost identical to that of a picture book - in a novel format. So I wrote incredibly short chapters and tried to fill each page with more pictures than words. I wanted to create a book that kids who don't like to read would want to read.

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.