Terry Pratchett Quotes

Kids books Grownup books That's just marketing. Books are books.

I've always said that Watership Down is not a book for children. I say: it's a book, and anyone who wants to read it can read it.

If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.

There really is no difference in the actual writing or plotting. I choose to tell different stories for the younger reader and, of course, I would never put sex and extreme violence in a YA book. But writing for adults and children requires the same care and attention.

No one thinks that young adults read hooks for YOUNG ADULTS, books for young adults are read by kids.

I don't think too much about the audience when I'm writing... I'm aware that 'Holes' was read by kids as young as 8, up to adults.

I mean, I don't write for kids.

I don't really see any barrier between teenage fiction and adult literature.

Books that kids read should be about what is going on in the world.

For me, writing for younger audiences and writing for adults uses two different halves of my brain.

I never wrote my books especially for children.

My advice is this. For Christ's sake, don't write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.

There's a difference between children's literature and all-ages literature. One is written expressly for children. The other is written for everyone, including children. And the difference usually manifests in not talking down to kids.

With the adult ones, I feel I need to get as deep inside the psychology of a character as I can, and that needs to be first-person. In the children's books, I feel I need some distance. I don't want to be the nine-year-old at the center of the story. I need to have some type of narrative voice.

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.

You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.

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.

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

It is always just telling a story, regardless of the age of the reader. Except, if I'm writing something for kids, I know there has to be hope. I don't necessarily feel that responsibility for adults, but I emphatically feel it for children. That's the only difference. There's no syntax difference. There's no semantics difference. There's no thematic difference.

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've been waiting a long time to be a children's book author. I've spent decades getting good enough to write for children. When a kid likes my book, or just likes that I'm visiting and talking to him or her, and I get a hug, I feel reborn. That hug that says you made a connection - there's nothing better in the whole wide world.

A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.

I feel like I own all the kids in the world because, since I've never grown up myself, all my books are automatically for children.

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.

I wanted to write honest books for kids because I didn't have those when I was a kid.