Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.
I want a nice picture book with 12 pictures - I do my best with that format.
As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.
I just did a picture book called The Wildest Brother on Earth, and you will find both of my children in there.
From a cognitive standpoint, I'm very aware that you have no room for error in a picture book. Every word counts.
In a novel, you have space to develop a character or a scene. You don't have that luxury in a 700-800-word picture book.
A picture book is a small door to the enormous world of the visual arts, and they're often the first art a young person sees.
The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?
I don't have an interest in any car that isn't good for the environment, other than maybe an aesthetic quality in a picture book.
I sculpted for four or five years. Mostly for my own amusement, I decided to do a picture book, and that was kind of a turning point.
A good picture book should have events that are visually arresting - the pictures should call attention to what is happening in the story.
As adults, we've seen so much before that we often turn the pages of a picture book without really looking. Young children tend to look more carefully.
If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed.
I have written a picture book that is based on my daughters. You know, my youngest one likes to tell everybody, 'Mommy wrote 'Best Day Ever' about us.' Which is true.
There's not too much difference between writing a picture book and writing a collection of a hundred poems or so, except that the bigger books take a lot longer to do.
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.
I'm usually working either on a picture book and a young adult book, or a middle grade book and a young adult book. When I get bored with one, I move to the other, and then I go back.
Whether it's music, loss of something, loneliness or friendship - if that emotion is heightened in some way and painted to fit in between the covers of 32 pages, that can become a picture book.
There's a book called 'Where The Wild Things Are,' by American writer Maurice Sendak... it really is the most sublime book. It's a picture book, but it works at so many levels, and it's fantastic.
I like working in children's books because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel.
I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off... As my friend Julius Lester says, 'A picture book is the essence of an experience.'
My daughter has seen the transition from struggling screenwriter to successful picture book author, and she's enjoyed it very much because she's a wonderful little kid. And she's always believed in her daddy.
The first book I could call mine, my first book, was a picture book, 'The Magic Monkey' - it was adapted from an old Chinese legend by a thirteen-year-old prodigy named Plato Chan with the help of his sister.
My job is not to frighten children, but sometimes addressing fears and concerns within the safe boundaries of a picture book can fill me with an awesome responsibility to be as truthful and transparent as possible.
If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times, and their parents are going to have to read it with them. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed.
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.
I grew up learning Russian and translating English songs when I became a teenager, we got to listen to West Germany radio stations, and learning lyrics with picture book. These are my first experiences with the English language.
Picture books have terrible PR amongst the children of this country. Ask any librarian: after a certain age, children just aren't interested in the picture book section anymore. It's filled with moms, strollers, and unbalanced toddlers.
Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story.
When I was young, my favorite picture book was 'Fletcher and Zenobia,' written by Edward Gorey and illustrated by Victoria Chess. It's long out of print now, but its mix of macabre humor and 1960s psychedelia made it a perfect children's book for the times.
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.
Each time I write a new piece, whether a novel, a picture book, a speech or anything, really, it has so much to do with what I'm going through personally or a problem I'm trying to work out. When I wrote my novel 'Baby,' my three children had all just gone out the door.
Whatever I'm thinking about has got to fit into thirty-two pages, the standard picture book size. So that's something. But the structure and the form for me are almost the most important, because these will express as much as words and images will the content of the work.
If it's just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn't much of a picture book, is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself.
When I wrote the eight fairy tales that appear in 'Horse, Flower, Bird' I was working toward a completely new form of artistic expression, trying to create a new kind of tale that also felt vintage: innocent and childlike, but haunted. I tried to write a picture-less picture book.
When you start writing a picture book, you have to write a manuscript that has enough language to prompt the illustrator to get his or her gears running, but then you end up having to cut it out because you don't want any of the language to be redundant to the pictures that are being drawn.
Because even very young people are expert readers of pictures, you can convey very complex and subtle messages through pictures that you'd need loads of words to explain. Making a picture book is also a bit like making your own film - and you can make anything you want happen, however impossible!
My first favourite book was 'Are You My Mother?' A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure.
There's this long tradition of... even 'Where The Wild Things Are,' which many people consider the best kids' picture book of all time. It was considered revolutionary, and some libraries wouldn't carry it. But it's a classic because it taps into empowerment for kids, kids facing dangers and winning.
I had tried writing novels for many years, and they always escaped me. For a long time, I thought, 'It's just not in me to write a novel. It's not something I'm able to do.' It seemed like everything I wrote naturally ended at the bottom of page three. A picture book, three pages; an essay, three pages.
Writing for children is my... that's my medium, you know, and the medium is the picture book, which is a very particular kind of book. I try to give children what I would give anybody, you know. I become interested in something. I find something fascinating. It has to fascinate me, and then I want to give it to them.
Telling stories with visuals is an ancient art. We've been drawing pictures on cave walls for centuries. It's like what they say about the perfect picture book. The art and the text stand alone, but together, they create something even better. Kids who need to can grab onto those graphic elements and find their way into the story.