children's book
Please look after this bear. Thank you.
A Bear Called Paddington (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 11.
“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh, said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s the same thing, he said.
Winnie the Pooh (New York: Penguin, 2009).
I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence.
“Maurice Sendak: ‘I refuse to lie to children,'” Guardian, October 2, 2011.
“Well, I am pretty,” replied Charlotte. “There’s no denying that. Almost all spiders are rather nice-looking. I’m not as flashy as some, but I’ll do.”
Charlotte’s Web (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 37.
Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly. I handed them, against the advice of experts, a mouse-boy, and they accepted it without a quiver. In Charlotte’s Web, I gave them a literate spider, and they took that.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. IV (New York: Picador, 2009), 147.
Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention. I’m lucky again—my own vocabulary is small, compared to most writers, and I tend to use the short words. So it’s no problem for me to write for children. We have a lot in common.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. IV (New York: Picador, 2009), 147.
One January day when I was four, the au pair from Denmark who was helping out my parents while my sister was in the hospital took me for a walk in the woods. She’d been reading me the chapter in Winnie the Pooh where Pooh and Piglet go round and round the spinney in the snow, trying to catch the Woozle. “Let’s go and find Piglet,” she said. The Keele woods were under snow as well, that day. The snow was deep and powdery on the paths, and the trees were smoothed, white masses bowed under the weight of winter, like melted candles. We passed through a zone of little fir trees near the bottom of the steps down into the woods, leaving behind a trail of big footprints and a trail of little ones … And there, perched on the hollow stump of an oak, was Piglet, wearing a small red scarf exactly as in the pictures. The soft toy versions of the Disney characters did not exist yet. She had sewn him herself from gray and white cotton ticking. It was wonderful.
The Child That Books Built (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 61–62.
One day Mr. Mallard decided he’d like to take a trip to see what the rest of the river was like, further on. So off he set.
Make Way for Ducklings (New York: Viking, 1941).
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
Charlotte’s Web (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), full color edition, 184.
“How long does getting thin take?” asked Pooh anxiously.
“In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets into a Tight Place,” in The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh (New York: Dutton, 1994), 28.
“It is hard to be brave,” said Piglet, sniffling slightly, “when you’re only a Very Small Animal.”
“In Which Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest, and Piglet Has a Bath,” in The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh (New York: Dutton, 1994), 92.