children Quotes

“Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.”

“So it took an eight-year-old child to bring ‘em to their senses...That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.”

“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”

“Only the children know what they are looking for.”

“Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.”

“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

”Don’t try to make me grow up before my time, Meg.”

“The love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.”

“All children, except one, grow up.”

“Strange children should smile at each other and say, “Let’s play.”

“Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t “bad kids.” They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.”

“As a kid, you learn to measure long before you understand the size or value of anything. Eventually, if you’re lucky, you learn that you’ve been measuring all wrong.”

“I, Willy Wonka, have decided to allow five children – just five, mind you, and no more – to visit my factory this year.”

“THEY . . . USED . . . TO . . . READ! They’d READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!”

“Every one of these old people was over ninety. They were as shrivelled as prunes, and as bony as skeletons, and throughout the day, until Charlie made his appearance, they lay huddled in their one bed, two at either end, with nightcaps on to keep their heads warm, dozing the time away with nothing to do. But as soon as they heard the door opening, and heard Charlie’s voice saying, ‘Good evening, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine, and Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina,’ then all four of them would suddenly sit up, and their old wrinkled faces would light up with smiles of pleasure – and the talking would begin. For they loved this little boy. He was the only bright thing in their lives, and his evening visits were something that they looked forward to all day long.”

“I don’t want a grown-up person at all. A grownup won’t listen to me; he won’t learn. He will try to do things his own way and not mine. So I have to have a child. I want a good sensible loving child, one to whom I can tell all my most precious candy-making secrets-while I am still alive.”

“Is she the only one at fault? For though she’s spoiled, and dreadfully so, A girl can’t spoil herself, you know. Who spoiled her, then? Ah, who indeed? Who pandered to her every need? Who turned her into such a brat? Who are the culprits? Who did that? Alas! You needn’t look so far To find out who these sinners are. They are (and this is very sad) Her loving parents, MUM and DAD. And that is why we’re glad they fell Into the garbage chute as well.”

“I’m sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?”

“Now the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are not his father and mother.”

″. . . Big Mama kept bees, too, right out there in the same spot they’re in today. Nobody around here had ever seen a lady beekeeper till her. She liked to tell everybody that women made the best beekeepers, ‘cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. ‘It comes from years of loving children and husbands,’ she’d say.”

“I am a mother and mothers don’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of their children, even when they are afraid, even when their children are adults.”

“What if, in raising children, we focus on ability instead of gender? What if we focus on interest instead of gender?”

“Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.”

“In his face, I see the whole of my life. I see a baby who came to me long after I’d given up … and a hint of the beauty I once had. I see … my life in his eyes.”

“To have a child is the greatest honor and responsibility that can be bestowed upon any living being.”

“I am not the child my father raised, but he is the father who raised her.”

Childhood’s logic never asks to be proved (all conclusions are absolute)

“Jo had absorbed many of her parents’ philosophies, and one of them was the belief that children deserved to be told the truth as much as possible.”

“By contrast, I can’t tell you how many Asian kids I’ve met who, while acknowledging how oppressively strict and brutally demanding their parents were, happily describe themselves as devoted to their parents and unbelievably grateful to them, seemingly without a trace of bitterness or resentment.”

“Western children are definitely no happier than Chinese ones.”

“Kids are smarter than we think. They know how to survive the shit that’s dealt them better than some welfare worker who never spent a day in one of those kids’ shoes.”

“He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though--and loathed him.”

“You only just tell a boy you won’t ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that’s all. Anybody can do it.”

“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.”

“Jekyll had more than a father’s interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference.”

“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”

“The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.”

He just reminded everyone that when Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” Jesus meant all the children, including Herdmans.

At last the candles burnt down to the branches and were put out. Then the children received permission to plunder the tree. Oh, how they rushed upon it, till the branches cracked, and had it not been fastened with the glistening star to the ceiling, it must have been thrown down. The children then danced about with their pretty toys, and no one noticed the tree, except the children’s maid who came and peeped among the branches to see if an apple or a fig had been forgotten.

And now the folding doors were thrown open, and a troop of children rushed in as if they intended to upset the tree; they were followed more silently by their elders. For a moment the little ones stood silent with astonishment, and then they shouted for joy, till the room rang, and they danced merrily round the tree, while one present after another was taken from it.

“They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them.”

“Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won’t learn their lessons or practise their scales. And sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience.”

Mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.

“Few sons are the equals of their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.”

“When I am come to mine own again, I will always honor little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.”

“A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.”

“I’ll continue to see things as a child. It’s not so far to fall.”

Peter, you’re twelve years old. I’m ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

“There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind. Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark street winds and bends. Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white arrows go To the place where the sidewalk ends. Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go, For the children, they mark, and the children, they know The place where the sidewalk ends.”

“A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.”

“It’s impossible to protect your kids against disappointment in life.”

“When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. ”

“Children are not so serious as grown-ups and they love to laugh.”

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child.—Away, away!

“If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.”

“Those are facts, but facts, to a child, are merely words to memorize.”

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.”

“I have found that the platonic affection in friendships and familial love for children can be relied upon with certainty to lift the bruised soul and repair the wounded spirit.”

“Why does a man want his children to be better than himself?”

“Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move away. The moments that used to define them—a mother’s approval, a father’s nod—are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“So I think that any successful policy program would recognize what my old high school’s teachers see every day: that the real problem for so many of these kids is what happens (or doesn’t happen) at home.”

“For kids like me, the part of the brain that deals with stress and conflict is always activated–the switch flipped indefinitely. We are constantly ready to fight or flee, because there is constant exposure to the bear, whether that bear is an alcoholic dad or an unhinged mom. We become hardwired for conflict. And that wiring remains, even when there’s no more conflict to be had.”

“This place I am hoping to get to is so marvelous that if I described it to you now you would go crazy with excitement. And then, if we failed to get there (which is very possible), you would die of disappointment. I don’t want to raise your hopes too much, my darlings.”

″‘I am the nursery magic Fairy,’ she said. ‘I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don’t need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real.‘”

“Do kids benefit when they see their moms and dads losing or quitting?”

“I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.”

″‘My dear old furry frump,’ he said, ‘do you know anyone in the whole world who wouldn’t swipe a few chickens if his children were starving to death?‘”

“For children to know and regulate their emotions, and be socially connected, they need to experience this kind of interaction many hundreds of times in the critical period and then to have it reinforced later in life.”

“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

“Through every kind of disaster and setback and catastrophe. We are survivors. And we teach our kids about that.”

“And to every kid in Georgetown and in all ‘the Gardens’ of the world: your voices matter, your dreams matter, your lives matter. Be the roses that grow in the concrete.”

“Mr. Fox looked at the four Small Foxes and he smiled. What fine children I have, he thought. They are starving to death and haven’t had a drink for three days, but they are still undefeated. I must not let them down.”

“Come over here, we say - to the edge, we say. I want to show you something, we say. We are afraid, they say; it’s very exciting, they say. Come to the edge, we say, use your imagination. And they come. And they look. And we push. And they fly. We to stay and die in our beds. They to go and to die howsoever, inspiring those who come after them to come to their own edge. And fly. ”

“There are times to teach and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. But to take the child alone, quietly, when the relationship is good and to discuss the teaching or the value seems to have much greater impact.″

“Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.”

“The small fox ran back along the tunnel as fast as he could, carrying the three plump hens. He was exploding with joy. ‘Just wait!’ he kept thinking, ‘just wait till Mummy sees these!’ He had a long way to run but he never stopped once on the way and he came bursting in upon Mrs. Fox. ‘Mummy!’ he cried, out of breath. ‘Look, Mummy, look! Wake up and see what I’ve brought you!’ Mrs. Fox, who was weaker than ever now from lack of food, opened one eye and looked at the hens. ‘I’m dreaming,’ she murmured and closed the eye again.”

″‘And it will soon grow again, Dad,’ said one of the Small Foxes. ‘It will never grow again,’ said Mr. Fox. ‘I shall be tail-less for the rest of my life.‘”

“And were they really so different?”

It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don’t. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?

“As [Ekwefi] buried one child after another her sorrow gave way to the despair and then to grim resignation. The birth of her children, which should be a woman’s crowning glory, became for Ekwefi mere physical agony devoid of promise. The naming ceremony after seven market weeks became an empty ritual.”

“My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that’s all I remember.”

“Children have an amazing ability to perceive this need in the parent(s). A child seems to know it unconsciously. By taking on the role of supplying his shame-based parents narcissistic gratification, the child secures love and a sense of being needed and not abandoned.”

“Good children are defined as meek, considerate, unselfish and perfectly law-abiding. Such rules allow no place for vitality, spontaneity, inner freedom, inner independence and critical judgment. These rules cause parents, even well-intentioned ones, to abandon their children. Such abandonment creates the toxic shame I’ve been describing.

“Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

“Better luck than all this could hardly have been hoped for; there was only one of them left to seek a place. Jurgis was determined that Teta Elzbieta should stay at home to keep house, and that Ona should help her. He would not have Ona working – he was not that sort of a man, he said, and she was not that sort of a woman. It would be a strange thing if a man like him could not support the family, with the help of the board of Jonas and Marija. He would not even hear of letting the children go to work – there were schools here in America for children, Jurgis had heard, to which they could go for nothing. […] Jurgis would have it that Stanislovas should learn to speak English, and grow up to be a skilled man.”

“People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.”

“Children just feel emotions and their reasoning mind doesn’t interpret or question them. This is why children accept certain people and reject other people.”

“The ease. Us, the children… I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery”

“I used to believe my father about everything but then I had children myself & now I see how much stuff you make up just to keep yourself from going crazy.”

″[Little Man] ran frantically along the road looking for a foothold and, finding one, hopped onto the bank, but not before the bus had sped past enveloping him in a scarlet haze while laughing white faces pressed against the bus windows.”

“There are better ways to teach a child compassion.”

“In our school there were different groups you would run with, depending on your station in life. There were the town kids, whose daddies owned the hardware store or what have you—they were your cheerleaders and your football players. Then there were hoodlums, the motorcycle types that cut down trees on Halloween. And then there were the rest of us, the poor kids and the farm kids. Greasers, we were called, or Nutters. The main rule was that there was absolutely no mixing.”

“Although I am nine months pregnant, although I have had plenty of time to dream, I have not really considered the specifics of this child. I have thought of this daughter only in terms of what she will be able to do for the daughter I already have…Then again, my dreams for her are no less exalted; I plan for her to save her sister’s life.”

“Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?”

“A young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts.”

“You are saving their lives for a life not worth living.”

“I’m a lady. You might not believe that from my offspring, but I am.”

“Big Walter used to say, he’d get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, ‘Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.”

“Of course she took him out and bought him clothes. It struck others as perhaps a bit aggressively philanthropic; for Leigh Anne, clothing a child was just what you did if you had the resources. She had done this sort of thing before, and would do it again.”

“. . .standards are for: they establish what children should know, not how they are taught or measured.”

“Knowing what to expect next gives children a sense of security.”

“Parenthood has the power to redefine every aspect of life - marriage, work, relationships with family and friends. Those helpless bundles of power and promise that come into our world show us our true selves- who we are, who we are not, who we wish we could be.”

“The episodic, reactive, almost frantic pace of what is broadcast makes children feel and act frantic and shortens their attention spans and their patience for activities that take time and problems that don’t yield immediate solutions.”

“We are living in an interdependent world where what our children hear, see, feel, and learn will affect how they grow up and who they turn out to be.”

“Children need close friends to help them grow up, to discover things about themselves and about life. They also need close friends to keep them sane”

“It is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children.”

’’There’s a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It’s not something you can give; it’s something they have to build. ”

“The dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own.”

“Whatever slavery might do to me, it could not shackle my children.”

“If a child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children—?”

“To gaze into the depths of blue of the child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation. I couldn’t abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose—as I did there, over and over, in the small hours—that with their voices in the air, their pressure on one’s heart, and their fragrant faces against one’s cheek, everything fell to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty.”

“The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.”

“Adults follow paths. Children explore.”

“What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.”

“I don’t want to miss the actual fabric of the interior of my life and the beautiful children growing up right this second in my own home because I’m working to please people somewhere out there. I’m afraid I’m missing it, I’m afraid I’m doing it wrong, and I want to know that I can change.”

“One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.”

“It’s natural he should be disappointed at not having any children: every man likes to have somebody to work for and lay by for, and he always counted so on making a fuss with ‘em when they were little.”

“The tyrannous and bloody act is done, The most arch deed of piteous massacre That ever yet this land was guilty of.”

“It’s no wonder we’re all such a mess, is it? We’re like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it. ”

″ If ... we can help them, then we have to help them. That’s ... the Eld’s way.”

“And it’s safe to assume that those in power would think longer and harder about launching a war if they envisioned their own sons and daughters in harm’s way.”

“Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss.”

“LEONTES You will! why, happy man be’s dole! My brother, Are you so fond of your young prince as we Do seem to be of ours? POLIXENES If at home, sir, He’s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter, Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy, My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all: He makes a July’s day short as December, And with his varying childness cures in me Thoughts that would thick my blood.”

″[War] provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world.”

″... having children-creating a family, so to speak- had taken on entirely new significance for her in the wake of her family’s losses.”

“And you told me you wanted children. That more than anything, you wanted to be a mother.”

“The father’s job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse to ride into battle when it’s necessary to do so. If you don’t get that from your father, you have to teach yourself.”

“Ending patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love.”

“In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard.”

“Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. ”

“In future feminist movement we need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism positively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family. ”

“It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.”

“A utopian vision of the patriarchal family remains intact despite all the evidence which proves that the well-being of children is no more secure in the dysfunctional male-headed household than in the dysfunctional female-headed household. ”

“A huge majority of parents use some form of physical or verbal aggression against children. Since women remain the primary caretakers of children, the facts confirm the reality that given a hierarchal system in a culture of domination which empowers females (like the parent-child relationship) all too often they use coercive force to maintain dominance.”

“The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary.”

“What greater gift could you offer your children than an inherent ability to earn a living just by being themselves?”

“All the queens of my acquaintance have children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my queen has not one. I feel ill-used.”

“Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion.”

“We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting lollipop or a toy bear’d worth of comfort.”

“It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.”

“Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That’s what makes them children.”

“I don’t think children ever forget the lies their parents tell them.”

“Tomorrow’s world will be shaped by what we teach our children today.”

“I’m, being the girls’ mother, should understand them more than anyone. But that’s what’s so frightening. I don’t know. Once they’re out of you, they’re different, kids are. Leaving their home, they will become another’s.”

“How can she expect her children to dream as big as the stars if they can’t lift their heads to gaze upon them?”

“The children have never seen the world outside their home. Not even through the windows. And Malorie hasn’t looked in more than four years. Four years.”

“I wish that you will have children together, and I wish that once or twice you will tell them about their Uncle Carlo that they never saw.”

“Rowing blindfolded is even harder than Malorie had imagined. Many times already, the rowboat has run into the banks and got stuck for a period of several minutes. In that time she was besieged by visions of unseen hands reaching for the blindfolds that cover the children’s eyes. Fingers coming up and out of the water, from the mud where the river meets the earth. The children did not scream, they did not whine. They are too patient for that.”

“If you want real peace in the world, start with children.”

“I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is, in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance.”

“I lost their childhood. Sometimes, you feel bad.”

“The train lurches hard from side to side. Enrique holds on with both hands.”

“The conversation is awkward. His mother is a stranger. This is probably expensive.”

“She stares awkwardly down at the kitchen counter. Then, quietly, she tells me about four other children I never knew existed.”

“The train crawls out of the Tapachula station. From here on, he thinks, nothing bad can happen.”

“It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society;”

“For he was an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.”

“I pointed out that so often our parenting in the West is too focused on our children, and their needs alone, rather than helping them to learn to care for others.”

“They laughed at it was a sound I recognized in my heart: My two children laughing... together.”

“‘Some clever children don’t discover how bright they are until after they’ve left school,’ continued Mr Holcombe, ‘and then spend the rest of their lives regretting the wasted years.‘”

“The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it.”

“Many toxic parents compare one sibling unfavorably with another to make the target child feel that he’s not doing enough to gain parental affection. This motivates the child to do whatever the parents want in order to regain their favor. This divide-and-conquer technique is often unleashed against children who become a little too independent, threatening the balance of the family system.”

“Children who are not encouraged to do, to try, to explore, to master, and to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate. Over-controlled by anxious, fearful parents, these children often become anxious and fearful themselves. This makes it difficult for them to mature. Many never outgrow the need for ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents continue to invade, manipulate, and frequently dominate their lives.”

“She began to understand why lovers talk baby talk to one another. There was no other socially acceptable circumstance in which the children inside her were permitted to come out. ”

“Memories can be vile, repulsive, little brutes. Like children I suppose. Haha. But can we live without them?”

“The most important thing anyone can do is raise their kids well.”

“You have taken root in the Beloved. I love your golden branches And the hundred graceful movements Your body now makes each time The wind, children and love come near.”

“That beaky anorexic and that toupeed Chihuahua. It’s beyond grotesque. Their children wouldn’t know whether to peck or bark.”

“Whatever you do, don’t die. Your children will never forgive you.... So your mother ran away to death. And after that, how could you trust anyone.”

“I have not really enjoyed my religions experiments very much and I don’t think I’ll make up my mind one way or the other for a long time. I don’t think a person can decide to be a certain religion just like that. It’s like having to choose your own name. You think about it a long time and then you keep changing your mind. If I should ever have children I will tell them what religion they are so they can start learning about it at a young age.”

The picture book includes amusing, intricate illustrations catching young children’s attention and interest. It is a vibrant and interesting story that children would enjoy teaching a message of having to pay for your mistakes.

“Many houses had been damaged by giant meatballs, stores were boarded up and there was no more school for the children.”

“Mamas and papas and uncles and aunts hug their little dears, then dust their pants.”

“Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? I see a red bird looking at me. ”

“Red Bird, Red Bird, What do you see? I see a yellow duck looking at me.”

“Children, Children, What do you see? We see a brown bear, a red bird, a yellow duck, a blue horse, a green frog, a purple cat, a white dog, a black sheep, a goldfish, and a teacher looking at us. That’s what we see. ”

“Teacher, Teacher, What do you see? I see children looking at me.”

“When at last she felt perfectly satisfied with them, she said one morning: ‘Come along, children. Follow me.’ ”

“Baby Llama, what a tizzy! Sometimes Mama’s very busy.”

“Lola won’t eat carrots, of course. She says carrots are for rabbits.”

“If only I had not wondered about my sister Ulape, where she was, and if the marks she had drawn upon her cheeks had proved magical. If they had, she was now married to Nanko and was the mother of many children. She would have smiled to see all of mine, which were so different from the ones I always wished to have.”

″ ‘Don’t you worry,’ said Mrs. Mallard. ‘I know all about bringing up children.’ And she did.”

“Mama Llama’s always near even if she’s not right here.”

“He would fine the most scaredy-cat kid in the whole world...and scare the tuna salad out of him!”

“Then some children on bicycles said ‘Look at the cow in the canal’ then followed after on the road above on the canal.”

“Llama llama red pajama in the dark without his mama. Eyes wide open, covers drawn...What if Mama Llama’s gone?”

“Mrs. Owens bent down to the baby and extended her arms. “Come now,” she said warmly. “Come to mama”″

“Llama llama red pajama hollers loudly for his mama.”

Every day, eight-year-old Christine’s walk to school takes her past a talking alley cat. Christine stops and feels its warm head beneath her hand, and the cat’s insights invariably give her something to ponder.

“Baby Llama goes to sleep.”

“Mama says she’ll be up soon. Baby Llama hums a tune.”

“Well, I might just try one if they’re all the way from Jupiter.”

“Tommy never bit his nails, and always did what his mother asked. Annika never fussed when she didn’t get her own way, and she was always very properly dressed in freshly ironed cotton.”

“Jumping with joy she skips down the street...”

Instead of being stories of hope for children, I suspect their massive appeal lies in the fact they are really wildly-nostalgic stories for adults about how broken childhoods (and sometimes even broken adulthoods) should have been.

The book is so intuitive and allows so much expression and voice intonation. The characters are distinct individuals and I could instantly find their voice. The art is simply amazing

Dave McKean’s illustrations are both haunting and hilarious at the same time. The wolves are portrayed as drawings made by a child, as it is implied on the front cover of the book. The wolves are also drawn in both a frightening and humorous way throughout the book.

What a lovely day at the fair. Children lining up for pony rides . . . moms and dads in a pie-eating contest . . . babies chasing butterflies . . . babies heading for the trees . . . I SAY! Where are those babies GOING?

“She is very good at wearing people out.”

Why would she “want” to go to school, when ...her teacher is a warty toad? ...her friends are crooks and villains? ...the principal chops your head off if you talk in class? It can’t be true...or “can” it? Find out in this laugh-out-loud account of the horrors of going to school, told from the point of view of a girl with a huge imagination

“For really there is nothing like wings for getting you into trouble. But, on the other hand, if you are in trouble, there is nothing like wings for getting you out of it.”

“Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse.”

“Everyday Olivia is supposed to take a nap.”

“Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof.”

A neat little book with poetry in it reminding us how much kids can hate school, somedays I can relate. The fun part is the rhyming and showing kids no matter what you are talking about, we can put in into a poem.

“There seems to be no game more beloved of children in all lands and all times than the one called Pretend”

“When I am come to mine own again, I will always honor little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.”

This is a really fun, playful poetry book and I can see why children would like it. Honor Brown tells of school in a very imaginative, negative way which is actually really funny.

A great example of an image where the wolves display both terror and humor is in the image of the wolves being shown in creepy shadows as they are watching television and are laughing their heads off.

“If this is the stone age and mum says the ice age is coming any minute now...how long is an age?”

The tongue twisters in this book will have your children laughing for hours--and that laughter just might be directed at you! Mixing genuine words with classic Seuss vocabulary, Oh Say Can You Say gets trickier with every page.

Don’t say he didn’t warn you. For a truly inspired family giglefest, this is the top of the charts. make slips and back flips, and your tongue may end up in Saint Looey!”

“Children are foul and filthy!” thundered The Grand High Witch. “They are! They are!” chorused the English witches. “They are foul and filthy!” “Children are dirty and stinky!” screamed The Grand High Witch. “Dirty and stinky!” cried the audience, getting more and more worked up.”

“I can lick twenty-two tigers today...”

“It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children.”

The story centers on a mother and her three children, a set of twins and their older sister, who have just moved into the old dilapidated house that has been in the family for years. Very soon after moving in, strange occurrences begin to happen and the children dedicate themselves to solving the mystery.

“You’re excused! You may go. Your fingernails aren’t very clean.”

“There are certain narrow, unimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the worst traits in children.”

“God loves old dogs and children and kept things, at our house, the way He wanted them.”

The silhouette illustrations are a delightful change. The story is in rhyme, so children will enjoy the beat of the story. During a picnic the babies crawl away, only to been noticed by a young boy. They had quite the adventure and many humorous situations. Never fear they young boy saves the day

“I saw it rolling downhill. If I can knock the lumps of it will roll better.”

“Table table here I come!”

“Think! Think! Think! That boy will think himself into an early grave...”

“It’s trousers I want, Dad.”

“Time...why is it time? What is time, dad?”

“I am strong and I work hard and I am willing to travel. But I am not mild mannered. If you should still care to write, I would be interested in your children and about where you live. And you.”

“We had an eater, a biter, and a crier. I thought that two-thirty would never come. I also thought my mother was slightly crazy for dreaming up the party in the first place. “Doesn’t Fudge have any normal friends?” I whispered. “There’s nothing wrong with Fudgie’s friends,” my mother whispered back. “All small children are like that.” ”

“I don’t like living in caves. Do neanderthal people wear stone trousers?”

“Some of you chaps should go home and take naps.”

“Beegu would always remember those small ones. She hoped they would remember her too.”

″‘And has she told you what happens to the children?’ ‘No, she hasn’t told me that. I only just know that it’s about Dust, and they’re like a kind of sacrifice.’ Again, that wasn’t exactly a lie, she thought; she had never said that Mrs. Coulter herself has told her. ‘Sacrifice is a rather dramatic way of putting it. What’s done is for their good as well as ours.‘”

They’re sitting in Grandpa’s shed – a stray dog and the two children, Prince Neumann and Lotta. The dog is telling a story, because he knows he’ll be rewarded with crispy chicken skin and a warm corner of the shed to sleep. The dog is telling the story of G. Odd, the great inventor, in whose garden he used to live.

“It describes the gruesome fates of children who fidget at table, suck their thumbs or refuse to eat their soup.”

“Can I be of help?′ Big Cat asked. ‘I want to see the world.’ Little Fish said. ‘The world is beautiful here, really beautiful,’ Big Cat said. ‘The flowers... the trees... the ocean just over the hill.”

“Big Cat ran over the hill, and into a shabby house. “is the ocean in here?′ Little Fish asked. ‘Your trip is over,’ Bid Cat said. Little Fish looked around at the pots and pans hanging on the walls.”

“Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.”

″ A tale of another fish’ ‘so big, he’d fill the kitchen’ ‘is enough to fool the cat (who’d tricked the fish into his pan in the first place).”

“i’ve got to get out of here!′ Little Fish said. ‘I’m tired of swimming in the same water. I want a bigger pond.’ Big Cat, strolling by, heard him.”

“A small fish who wants to see the world beyond his pond is befriended by a cat who has other plans for the voyager.”

“I wrestled with that shadow, but it wasn’t any fun, I tried my very hardest— all the same, my shadow won.”

“My two little children are up here with us. You wouldn’t shoot my children!”

“Yesterday you shot my children. You shot all six of my children.”

“In My Presents, toddlers can lift the flaps to find out what’s inside all the birthday presents. Then open the very last one and look inside the basket to find the best present of all!”

“Then, when a terrible monster from outer space threatens to lay waste to the planet, it is the Iron Man who finds a way to save the world.”

“Finally, Mrs. Thaw gets her way, and the lovely snow starts to disappear. Ollie is very upset and wishes it could be winter forever.”

“One day, the children were in the woodshed looking for a stick to use as a riding crop, when they found a broken umbrella. They decided it would make perfect wings for their dragon, and they fastener it to the old tree trunk.”

“A terrifying dragon with sharp teeth and claws rushed towards them. Kai and Kelly ran back to their own dragon, who flew quickly into the air. The wicked dragon hissed and leaped, but he had no wings to fly.”