John Barton Quotes

You can't write if you don't read.

Let all the time you can get be spent in trying to learn to read.

The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity.

We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.

If a big person invests time in reading, kids learn reading is important, the child is important, words are important, stories are important.

I never stopped reading.

I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something.

I have said it often and I will say it again: I believe you learn to read when you are young, then read to learn for the rest of your life.

Read, read, read, read and then read some more.

I teach for the Book Trust, which promotes reading and writing with children.

I was one of those children they used to call 'readers.'

Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.

I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can't find the time, there are people who've never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous.

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I didn't read a novel all the way through until after high school. Blasphemy, I know. I'm an author now. Books and words are my world.

My elementary school teachers were big on pushing kids to read. If you read a certain amount of books, they would provide you with incentives, sort of like what we are doing with the WrestleMania Reading Challenge.

I'm just encouraging students to read. It's something you can do daily. It's something you can do whether you're sitting at home reading a newspaper or ordering something online. It's endless.

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 wasn't really comfortable reading until I was 12.

Parents should be encouraged to read to their children, and teachers should be equipped with all available techniques for teaching literacy, so the varying needs and capacities of individual kids can be taken into account.

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

The fact is that our kids aren't reading books - or frankly, much of anything lately. Schools are under funded, some schools even closing their libraries. Parents have to realize that it's their job, and not the school's job, to get kids into the habit of reading for fun.

I care about reading, a lot. It's a big part of my life.

I can't promise that every child with learning differences will become a novelist, but I do think all children can become lifelong readers.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

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