Writing for Kids Quotes

I used to want to be a children's writer, because I would have all these great ideas when I was little, and I'd write them and draw them, and turn them into class.

In some ways, getting published in children's literature is a little more open than publishing adult literature. It's less hinged on who you might know.

Every novelist should write something for children at least once in his lifetime.

I have written, probably, more books for children than any other writer, from story-books to plays, and can claim to know more about interesting children than most.

Writing history and biography for kids calls for special skills that can only be acquired through practice and that are different from those required for an adult audience.

I've never written specifically for children as such. I write to please myself, and if it is suitable, it gets printed as a children's book.

How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it

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.

I've learned to accept that I'm a children's writer, even if it's not what I set out to become. It's what I should have been all along, and I'll stay in this role as long as I'm a writer.

I've always been into 'fast-paced, don't bore 'em, keep it moving along, stick with the story.' You know: tell a story the way I want to hear a story. I find it more rewarding to write for kids, but I also find it a little easier, because you can just let loose a little bit more in terms of fantasy and stuff.

Writing for children may have kept me young at heart.

One of the things I would like to do is make up stories that I would have enjoyed when I was a kid. So, if I'm thinking about an audience, it's usually a younger version of myself.

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

For some reason, I have always had a really good ability to write children in a way that's realistic but not annoying. The key to that is underwriting them: peel back the dialogue and keep it simple.

I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier.

I've never written a children's book, but when people meet me for the first time and I say I write books, they invariably reply, 'Children's books?' Maybe it's something about my face.

It's really fun to write something for kids. You can make it a little bit more extreme and crazy than you would for adults.

In some sense, there is no such thing as writing for children.

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

Had I not had children of my own, I would have never written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so.

It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it.

When you write for kids, people always ask you what lesson you mean to impart. I don't think adult writers get that question. I never mean to teach anybody a lesson, because I don't know anything myself.

It's actually not very hard to re-set between the adult novels and the ones for younger readers. The narrative voices are very similar, the smartass attitude, the environmental battles. Kids love books that are irreverent and challenge authority, when authority is arbitrary, greedy or foolish. They also love it when you make fun of grownups, and I've spent my whole life as a writer doing that.

I became a children's author by accident.

All I care about really is writing something worthwhile for children, something that will engage them in some way and stimulates in them a sense of wonder.