Jewell Parker Rhodes Quotes

What would make me happiest is if kids read these books [Bink & Gollie] and think: there is so much to love in the world; and words are so much fun.

I dreamed of becoming a writer. And this dream is about to become a reality with the publication of my first, and hopefully not my last, children's book.

I’m one of those very lucky people who absolutely love what they do for a living. There is no career better suited to my eccentricities, strengths, and passions than that of a children’s book author.

The best part of my life is having my kids.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I'd written, I don't want to leave that behind.

If you look at the whole thing, I think the most gratifying thing is my kids, without a doubt.

I love kids, so working with them wasn't a problem.

In the usual way I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of "normal" work. In my twenties some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was twenty-seven before my adult novel, The Birthgrave, was taken by DAW Books in the USA. This enabled me finally to stop doing stupid and soul-killing jobs, and start working day and night as a professional writer. It felt like a rescue from damnation, and still does.

When people ask me what qualifies me to be a writer for children, I say I was once a child. But I was not only a child, I was, better still, a weird little kid, and though I would never choose to give my own children this particular preparation for life, there are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid.

When you're connected to a source and to each other through conversation, through making love, through meditation, playing games with your kids, all that stuff, then your self-esteem's going to go up.

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 don't change the language for children books. I don't make the language simpler. I use words that they might have to look up in the dictionary. The books are shorter, but there's just not that much difference other than that to be honest. And the funny thing is, I have adult writer friends [to whom I would say], "Would you think of writing a children's book?" and they go, "No, God, I wouldn't know how." They're quite intimidated by the concept of it. And when I say to children's books writers, would they write an adult book, they say no because they think they're too good for it.

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

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.

99.9% of being a good parent is just being present with your child. On the flipside of that, 100% of being happy is just being present.

I already have a wife who is too much for me.. she is my art, and my works are my children.

The usual run of children's books left me cold, and at the age of six I decided to write a book of my own. I managed the first line, 'I am a swallow.' Then I looked up and asked, 'How do you spell telephone wires?

The books we enjoy as children stay with us forever -- they have a special impact. Paragraph after paragraph and page after page, the author must deliver his or her best work.

The children's book world has given me wonderful friendships and an unbelievably rich life.

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.

I just want that unconditional love, the kind you get with a family member. You might get lucky enough to find that unconditional love in a friend or a lover, but it's very rare. So if I ever have a kid, it'd be so that I could look in those eyes and know that this child is a piece of me and will love me the same way I love, but I think that's selfish of me.

And so I write the way I myself would like the book to be – if I were a child. I write for the child within me.

I don't think that children, if left to themselves, feel that there is an author behind a book, a somebody who wrote it. Grown-ups have fostered this quotient of identity, particularly teachers. Write a letter to your favorite author and so forth. When I was a child I never realized that there were authors behind books. Books were there as living things, with identities of their own.

For some reason, I never felt the need to have kids. My wife feels the same. We don't feel a void. I don't think they would give my life meaning. I do think of the books as my children, though. Whatever is inside of me, I put into my books.