A Quote by Rebecca Serle

I always say it's a shame picture books get such a bad rep. Illustrations are tough to sell older kids on! — © Rebecca Serle
I always say it's a shame picture books get such a bad rep. Illustrations are tough to sell older kids on!
When I would sell encyclopedias, I would drive down the road looking for a house with a swing set in the back, and I'd say, "Oh, those folks got kids. They need some books." I'd knock on their door and sell them a set of encyclopedias, and those books were from $300 to $600. I'd look around the house, and if there wasn't that much furniture in the house, I felt a little bad about selling a $600 set of books to people who couldn't afford a couch. So I didn't last at that job very long.
I think that actually the rhythmic nature of picture books and of young reader story books is a way to help kids fall in love with language and what you can do with it and how it sounds in your range. It sort of has a musicality but on the other hand they get the story and the ideas and the context of it. I think it's a way to get kids into it and I also think that when kids are around people who love books it rubs off on them.
It's tough for kids to stay focused if they don't have something to get them off the streets... that's where the kids can get into the bad things.
I love picture books. I think some of the best people in children's books are the ones who create their own picture books. I wish I could say I'm one of them, but I'm not.
To me, this is one of the great things about writing kids' books: the illustrations.
I've always been drawn to and fascinated by physical and psychological change. If I'm able to make pictures of children that are so real, as you follow the children over the years in any given book, and in subsequent books they get older and older and grow up, perhaps there might be something cautionary in that visual example. Every child is going to grow up. You can see it happen in the books: They get older and older and belong to themselves to a greater and greater extent.
A lot of comedians get a bad rep once they have kids and that's all they talk about, and people are like, 'I don't want to hear about your kids!' I'm like, 'Prepare yourselves. That's all I'm going to talk about.'
What more do I need to say? Conservative books sell. I can't help it if liberal books don't sell.
To see what books were available for my older students, I made many trips to the library. If a book looked interesting, I checked it out. I once went home with 30 books! It was then that I realized that kids' novels had the shape of real books, and I began to get ideas for young adult novels and juvenile books.
We've always read to the kids, every night both kids get books. That's really important, and they love books. Our daughter is obsessed with reading and books, so it's really sweet. She has her own little personal library.
I hope to encourage more children to discover and love reading, but I want to focus particularly on the appreciation of picture books…. Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.
As you get older and more thoughtful, you carry stuff with you. Your kids get older, you take on their sorrows, you enjoy their triumphs. Life doesn't always go to plan.
Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older.
Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at proper books, which means books without pictures.
Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at 'proper' books, which means books without pictures.
The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life.
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