I don’t like banging on noisy instruments, I don’t like songs that get stuck in my head,and I don’t like eyeballs staring at me. That’s how come I don’t like music class. The other kids at school like music a lot. That’s no biggie, though. Everybody’s different from everybody, and I’m different about music.

I think something quite dreadful has been happening to criticism in the arts, particularly in America, during the last twenty years. In an age which is so much dominated by technological advance, the methods and even the jargon of science and engineering have mistakenly been adopted not only by fringe disciplines like psychology and social studies but by many arts scholars who should have known better.from "In Defense of the Artist" in Signposts to Criticism of Children's Literature (1983)

One of my pet irritations today is the whole idea that the great interest and upsurge in books about black life has just come along. 1937 and 1938 were the years when the interest in this whole subject was born.from "Guidelines for Black Books: An Open Letter to Juvenile Editors" (1969) in Children and Literature (1973)

Only those books which consistently produce high profits are allowed to survive, and a number of "good books" have slipped quietly out of print. It is less likely than it used to be for a scholar or a teacher or a librarian - or a child - simply to come in contact with a book which is neither brand new nor extremely popular.

The effort of focusing all serious attention on a small number of books and authors is to diminish awareness of the richness and variety of children's literature. It becomes impossible to grasp the development of children's literature, or the context in which individual books were written. Ultimately, the study of children's literature is the poorer for ignoring so much fine material. And children are the poorer too, given fewer opportunities to hear of books that might enrich their lives.

Maybe I should have asked, first?

One of the hindrances to the growth of literary appreciation in the library profession is the compulsion we are under to read the latest books, whatever they are, and to keep in touch with all contemporary expression, no matter how inept, in order to answer our inquiring readers.

Yesterday’s children got what was good for them. Today’s children get what they want. One of the things they don’t want very much is a book. Literacy itself is becoming yet another commodity in short supply.from "One Thumping Lie Only" in The Thorny Paradise (1975)

When I hear someone say, “Yes, it’s a good book but our children don’t like it,” I am inclined to think that either the librarian herself does not like it or has not read it. If a book is really good, if it is really alive, it is a potentially important experience for some children, perhaps only a few, but it may have a more far-reaching significance to those few than would a hundred mediocre books.

Popularity of a book is not the criterion of its importance. A few very popular books are important experiences that we are glad to see many children having, but many popular books are, at best, commonplace experiences. The temptation in buying books for libraries is to buy those that “move,” that will not sit on the shelves. Yet very often the book that rests on the shelf may be the one that would be the most vivid experience of all to a certain child if he could but find it.