children's book, n.Definitions

The Children's book is not a minor amusement but part of the whole literary mainstream.

The Children's book is any book at all if you give it to a child. Children are the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.

The Children's book is a genre whose greatest representatives, by definition, appeal to the widest readership of all, for while there are good books which are only for adults, there are no good books which are only for children.

The Children's book is a unique and valid art form; a means of dealing with things which cannot be dealt with quite as well in any other way.

The Children's book is written by people with that extremely rare ability to retain a child's view of the world and a mature understanding of what it means to retain it.

The Children's book is written to be read, just as adult books are written to be talked about at cocktail parties

The Children's book is best written to be so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years.

The Children's book is, in these days of tension and confusion, the form of literature with a greater potential for good or evil than any other on earth.