A Quote by Sherman Alexie
I refuse to censor myself and kids will find their own way to my books and to all of the books that matter to them. As I write more honestly more kids will make their way toward me. And in subverting their repressive parents kids will learn the value of subverting the repressive nature of all authority figures.
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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.
The best way to get kids reading more is to give them books that they'll gobble up - and that will make them ask for another.
At times, parents foist their own choices on kids and try to get them to read the classics. But kids have very high filters and don't take to it. At other times, parents simply don't know what books to select for their children and end up giving books that aren't appropriate.
Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.
This is what I believe is most important: getting good books into the hands of kids - books that will make them want to say, 'Wow, that was great. Give me another one to read.'
Schools and parents can team up to find books that kids will really get excited about - that will make them say, 'That was a great experience. Now I know why people get excited about reading.'
Players who are committed to the team first will find a way to help when things are going bad, they will do whatever it takes. Kids that are more into themselves will not do that. They will take care of themselves and get more individual when things are tough.
I don't know what rituals my kids will carry into adulthood, whether they'll grow up attached to homemade pizza on Friday nights, or the scent of peppers roasting over a fire, or what. I do know that flavors work their own ways under the skin, into the heart of longing. Where my kids are concerned I find myself hoping for the simplest things: that if someday they crave orchards where their kids can climb into the branches and steal apples, the world will have trees enough with arms to receive them.
My new apartment might be a place where there are lots of children. They might gather on my porch to play, and when I step out for groceries, they will ask me, "Hi, do you have any kids?" and then, "Why not, don't you like kids?" "I like kids," I will explain. "I like kids very much." And when I almost run over them with my car, in my driveway, I will feel many different things.
I would make up [Theodor] Seuss-like books at night when I was cleaning up from the dinner, you know, putting these little kids to bed, reading them rhyming books. And so that's what I started doing. They were really bad. I have some in a box and it says on the box, it's a note to my kids you know, when I die, if you ever publish these I will come back and haunt you.
I think it's good for parents to be supportive, to motivate, and to somewhat nudge their kids because the majority of kids will want to quit something when it gets hard - that's just their nature. Children will normally take the easier road.
I'd always been around kids, and when you don't have kids, you have a lot more time to do things. Before I had kids, I was a lot more prolific and wrote books a lot faster.
With my adult books, for the first six weeks or so, it's about 60 percent ebooks in terms of sales. The kids' books, it's like 5 percent. Which means that the parents, the ones that aren't going into stores now, they're no longer buying books for their kids, which is not great.
I never thought I was writing for kids at all. It really shocked and unsettled me to hear kids were buying the books. If I'd known I was writing for kids, I might actually have spelt things out a bit more, and that would probably have killed the appeal.
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.
Parents can learn that parental authority doesn't depend on knowing everything. The more you pretend, the more risk that it'll be traumatic and damaging to the kids and their relationship with you when they find out the truth.
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