Eoin Colfer Quotes

Experts say that if children can't read by the end of the fifth grade, they lose self-confidence and self-esteem, making them more likely to enter the juvenile justice system.

Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt.

Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills.

I was lucky because my mum was a teacher and showed me how to read and write. But most importantly, she encouraged me to use my imagination.

I had the fortune or misfortune to learn how to read fluently starting at the age of three. So I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit 1st grade. And I already knew that the teachers were lying to me.

I skipped kindergarten because I was reading at a pretty high level. That's a weird and cocky thing to say, but I was real sharp, and I knew that early on.

My grandmother taught me how to read, very early, but she taught me to read just the way she taught herself how to read - she read words rather than syllables. And as a result of that, when I entered school, it took me a long time to learn how to write.

I say this as a young dad seeing children going into primary school: I don't think we should underestimate the formative effect on a child of those first years in primary school.

I'm a great believer that the most important years are the sort of early years but the preschool years and then into the first and second grades. If you get a good base in the first and second grade and you can read, you can do anything.

The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet

I cannot remember not being able to read.

I learnt to read when I was five, and I think that is the most important thing that happened to me.

One way to ensure that all kids will be successful in school and life is by focusing on literacy by the end of the third grade.

My mother had been an English teacher in India before she came to the U.K., and she taught me to read early on - not only in English, but in Hindi, too. My teachers didn't like the fact that I was reading more quickly than they were teaching, and as a consequence, I would sometimes get bored in class.

I think it is shocking that 15- and 16-year-olds leave school unable to add up and with the reading ability of a four-year-old.

As a small kid, I had this huge desire to be thought of as really clever.

Children don't drop out of high school when they are 16, they do so in the first grade and wait 10 years to make it official.

Up until 3rd grade you are learning to read. After 3rd grade, you are reading to learn. if you aren’t … reading proficiently at the end of the 3rd grade, you are going to struggle throughout the rest of your school years.

Abundant research has shown that children raised by two parents in an ongoing union are more likely to develop the self-discipline and self-confidence that make for success in life …

One of the few advantages to not being beautiful is that one usually gets better-looking as one gets older; I am, in fact, at this very moment, gaining my looks.

Some women can feel under-qualified due to a general lack of confidence whereas, in fact, they are uniquely qualified.

I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid.

I had begun reading earlier than most because my sister Emmy Lou, no doubt to keep me from bothering her, decided it was easier to teach me to read stories to myself rather than to read them to me, as she had been doing.

Private education can give you confidence, which is marvellous; a sense of entitlement isn't.

I grew up your classic nerd who was not good at throwing balls or kicking them. I was good at reading stories by myself. That was my specialty as a child.