Picture Books Quotes

• A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.

  Arthur Helps

  Book, Men, Action

  52 Copy quote

• With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.

  Beverly Cleary

  Book, Reading, Chance

  53 Copy quote

• It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books.

  Margaret Mahy

  Book, Ideas, Example

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Eric Carle

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  27 Copy quote

• The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?

  David Attenborough

  Inspirational, Motivational, Book

  192 Copy quote

• I think that actually the rhythmic nature of picture books and of young reader story books is a way to help kids fall in love with language and what you can do with it and how it sounds in your range. It sort of has a musicality but on the other hand they get the story and the ideas and the context of it. I think it's a way to get kids into it and I also think that when kids are around people who love books it rubs off on them.

  Josh Prince

  Falling In Love, Book, Kids

  4 Copy quote

• All really good picture books are written to be read five hundred times

  Rosemary Wells

  Book, Writing, Hundred

  10 Copy quote

• A good picture book can almost be whistled. ... All have their own melodies behind the storytelling.

  Margaret Wise Brown

  Book, Storytelling, Melody

  12 Copy quote

• Carrying a small notebook with you always, in your pocket or purse, along with a reliable ballpoint pen will enable you to jot down spot observations and quick character sketches before the first sharp impressions fade away. You'll need all kinds of story actors, because even picture books can include a wide range of ages, relationships, occupations, and nationalities. Learn to observe and analyze swiftly, wherever you are.

  Lee Wyndham

  Notebook, Writing, Character

  17 Copy quote

• Remember picture books are the closest form of writing to a poem. Even though they don't have to rhyme, they must be poetic. They must be written so the worst actress can read with comfort and expression.

  Kirby Larson

  Book, Writing, Expression

  4 Copy quote

• For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Children, Book, Writing

  Source: bookpage.com

  4 Copy quote

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• Picture books are an emotional medium.  They need to make us feel something.

  Marla Frazee

  Book, Emotional, Needs

  6 Copy quote

• I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished ... do I begin the pictures.

  Maurice Sendak

  Book, Writing, Years

  Maurice Sendak, William Knowlton Zinsser (1998). “Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

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• When was the last time you read a book? The truth now. And picture books don't count-I mean something with print in it.

  William Goldman

  Book, Mean, Lasts

  William Goldman (2013). “The Princess Bride”, p.127, A&C Black

  10 Copy quote

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• I can't think of a story that doesn't have something terrible in it. Otherwise, it's dull. So when I embarked into the world of picture books, my first thought was to do something about the dark.

  Daniel Handler

  Book, Dark, Thinking

  "Deadpan Humor And Childhood Fears Collide In 'The Dark'". Interview with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. June 19, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

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• The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.

  Margaret Mahy

  Book, Writing, Simple

  4 Copy quote

• I remember the special quiet of rainy days
  when I felt that I could enter the pages
  of my beautiful picture books.
  Now I try to recreate that feeling of believing
  that the imaginary place I'm drawing really exists.
  The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope
  others as well, that such places might be real.

  Jan Brett

  Beautiful, Real, Book

  13 Copy quote

• I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales

  Carol Ann Duffy

  Book, Writing, Fairy Tale

  "Christmas Carol". Interview with Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. December 3, 2005.

  7 Copy quote

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• My goal with The Adventures of Captain Underpants was to invent a style which was almost identical to that of a picture book - in a novel format. So I wrote incredibly short chapters and tried to fill each page with more pictures than words. I wanted to create a book that kids who don't like to read would want to read.

  Dav Pilkey

  Book, Adventure, Kids

  17 Copy quote

• <...> though he found that if you are stupid enough to bury a camera underground you won't be taking many pictures with it afterwards. Thus the story has no picture book for the period May 10, 1991 - January 7, 1992. But this is not important. It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it's great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.

  Jon Krakauer

  Memories, Stupid, Real

  6 Copy quote

• You need a theme in a picture book just as much or maybe even more than you need it in a novel.

  Eve Bunting

  Book, Needs, Theme

  19 Copy quote

• I just did a picture book called The Wildest Brother on Earth, and you will find both of my children in there.

  Cornelia Funke

  Brother, Children, Book

  4 Copy quote

• The images in a picture book are the driving forces that tell the story. The words tell only what the pictures can't.

  Dan Yaccarino

  Book, Stories, Driving

  5 Copy quote

• Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is man's only lasting monument.

  William Morris Hunt

  Art, Book, Men

  7 Copy quote

• Every word, every character in a picture book must count.

  Marla Frazee

  Book, Character

  5 Copy quote