Top 25 Picture Book Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Picture Book Quotes from famous people such as Gayle Forman, Chris Raschka, Philip Reeve, Kathi Appelt, Till Lindemann, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

I have written a picture book that is based on my daugh

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.
Gayle Forman
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.
Chris Raschka
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.
Philip Reeve
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.
Kathi Appelt
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.
Till Lindemann
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.
Mark Haddon
A good picture book should have events that are visually arresting – the pictures should call attention to what is happening in the story.
Chris Van Allsburg
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.
Rebecca Serle
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.
Chris Raschka
As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.
Anthony Browne
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.
Debi Gliori
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.
Kate Bernheimer
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.
Henry Selick
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
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.
Jacqueline Woodson
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.
Chris Van Allsburg
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!
Mini Grey
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.
Daniel Handler
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.
Rick Riordan
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.
Jack Prelutsky
I just did a picture book called The Wildest Brother on Earth, and you will find both of my children in there.
Cornelia Funke
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.
Drew Daywalt
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.
Chris Raschka
From a cognitive standpoint, I’m very aware that you have no room for error in a picture book. Every word counts.
Kate DiCamillo
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.
Kirby Larson