Children’s books can be deceptively simple. However, it takes effort to create a unique and beautiful story that children will love. It’s fun peaking into each author’s mind and seeing what they think about their craft. Here are some insightful quotes from children’s book authors about writing for children.
On Being Succinct
Dr. Seuss
“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”
C.S. Lewis
“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”
Eric Carle
“Let’s put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20.”
ON Inspiration
A.A. Milne
“Ideas may drift into other minds, but they do not drift my way. I have to go and fetch them. I know no work manual or mental to equal the appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere.”
Jack London
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
Beatrix Potter
“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.”
H.A. Rey
(On finding ideas for Curious George) “I know what I liked as a child, and I don’t do any book that I, as a child, wouldn’t have liked.”
ON Writing for a Living
Dan Santat
“When I speak to kids at school, the thing I most like to tell them is to do what they love for a living. I think this comes from my experience of being told that I should be a doctor. But I find that regardless of how much money you make, happiness comes from doing what you love.”
Shel Silverstein
“Never explain what you do. It speaks for itself. You only muddle it by talking about it.”
Neil Gaiman
“The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like.”
roald Dahl
“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.”
ON Writing for Children
Madeleine L’Engle
“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.”
Maurice Sendak
“I don’t write for children. I write. And somebody says, that’s for children.”
C.S. Lewis
“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
Mo Willems
“I’m very lucky to write for children, because I don’t have to deal with popular culture. I can just deal with core fundamental issues: jealousy, love, hatred, sadness, joy, wanting to drive a bus.”
Madeleine L’Engle
“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
Roald Dalh
“I’m probably more pleased with my children’s books than with my adult short stories. Children’s books are harder to write. It’s tougher to keep a child interested because a child doesn’t have the concentration of an adult.”
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