Mem Fox Quotes

When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.

The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading. It isn’t achieved by the book alone, nor by the child alone, nor by the adult who’s reading aloud—it’s the relationship winding between all three, bringing them together in easy harmony.

Writing a picture book is like writing 'War and Peace' in Haiku.

Books don't harm kids; they arm them.

As adults we choose our own reading material. Depending on our moods and needs we might read the newspaper, a blockbuster novel, an academic article, a women's magazine, a comic, a children's book, or the latest book that just about everyone is reading. No one chastises us for our choice. No one says, 'That's too short for you to read.' No one says, 'That's too easy for you, put it back.' No one says 'You couldn't read that if you tried -- it's much too difficult.' Yet if we take a peek into classrooms, libraries, and bookshops we will notice that children's choices are often mocked, censured, and denied as valid by idiotic, interfering teachers, librarians, and parents. Choice is a personal matter that changes with experience, changes with mood, and changes with need. We should let it be.

The ideal three stories a day are one favorite, one familiar, and one new, but the same book three times is also fine.

If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent and every adult caring for a child read aloud three stories a day to the children in their lives ,we would probably wipe out illiteracy in one generation" Reading Magic Mem Fox

When I say to a parent, 'read to a child,' I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.

Whatever happens in the world of school, continuing to read aloud to our children at home should solve most reading problems and will always be a lifeline to their happiness, their literacy, and their future. (Reading Magic)

Read-aloud sessions are times when parents and children fall in love with each other. (Reading Magic)

We are born with a natural delight in the music of language. As infants we coo and babble and let consonants roll around in our mouths like mother’s milk. As young children, we invent words, mash syllables together, and delight in nonsensical lines. We let ourselves be lulled to sleep by the playful rhymes of Mem Fox (“It’s time for bed, little goose, little goose, / The stars are out and on the loose”). We seek out stories with fanciful sounds (“Quickberry / Quackberry / Pick me a blackberry”). We begin to sense the link between what’s on the surface, and what’s under it (“I meant no harm. I most truly did not. / But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got. / I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads. / I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads”). As we mature, our delight in the music of words goes a bit underground, but it’s still there. We repeat not just Chaucer’s prologue, but also advertising jingles. We let brand names like Chunky Monkey and SurveyMonkey tumble off our tongues. We appreciate the curt sentences of Hemingway as well as those that are long and loose and lyrical. We let ourselves be moved by the moral authority of Nelson Mandela. We follow the Dalai Lama on Facebook. We let Chris Christie voice our outrage after a hurricane, Barack Obama our sorrow after a massacre of children. Language remains an adventure, if sometimes a somewhat mysterious one: We are drawn to reliable narrators and find that metaphors lift us. We are transported by soaring vowels. The cadence of sentences acts on us like the rhythm of an ancient drum. The music of language leads us to meaning, to our own humanity.