Clive Staples Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia
The Silver Chair (1953), Ch. 16: The Healing of Harms
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956)
Clive Staples Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia
The Silver Chair (1953), Ch. 16: The Healing of Harms
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956)
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer
Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Context: I've always believed that there is no subject that is taboo for the writer. It is how it is written that makes a book acceptable, as a work of art, or unacceptable and pornographic. There are many books circulating today, for the teen-ager as well as the grown up, which would not have been printed in the fifties. It is still amazing to me that A Wrinkle In Time was considered too difficult for children. My children were seven, ten, and twelve while I was writing it, and they understood it. The problem is not that it's too difficult for children, but that it's too difficult for grown ups. Much of the world view of Einstein's thinking wasn't being taught when the grown ups were in school, but the children were comfortably familiar with it.
“Dull grown-ups and bright children form a particularly tolerant friendship.”
Samuel R. Delany book Nova
Source: Nova (1968), Chapter 3 (p. 44)
Sean Reardon American sociologist
No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 17e
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry book The Little Prince
Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours leur donner des explications.
Le Petit Prince (1943)
G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant
"A Defence of Baby-Worship"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.
Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books
As quoted in "The Paternal Pride of Maurice Sendak" by Bernard Holland, in The New York Times (8 November 1987) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6DC103CF93BA35752C1A961948260&scp=2&sq=Sendak+protecting&st=nyt <br class="br">Context: Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what's real and what's not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
“When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean.”
William Faulkner book The Reivers
The Reivers (1962)
Context: When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it, which is not innocence but appetite; his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it, which is not ignorance but size. But Boon didn't know this. He must seduce me. And he had so little time: only from the time the train left until dark.