I made a lot of friends at school, and they were all Africans. I could have felt very different. I didn't feel different, I didn't notice the color o….

My Mother was a very wild Australian woman. When we were in Africa she could kill a snake with one blow from a crow bar, which she kept at the back d….

I have very little patience with children..

The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading..

DO NOT attempt to bring up other people's children through your text..

If you are not a writer, you will not understand the difficulties of writing. If you are not a writer, you will not know the fears and hopes of the w….

As everyone knows, nothing is sweeter than tiny baby fingers and chubby baby toes..

I realized with grief that purposeless activities in language arts are probably the burial grounds of language development and that coffins can be fo….

Books don't harm kids; they arm them..

Reading aloud and talking about what we're reading sharpens children's brains. It helps develop their ability to concentrate at length, to solve prob….

The fastest way to teach a child to read is to teach them to write..

Putting babies as young as two weeks into child care for the first year of their life, for 60 hours a week, will cause their brains damage..

I think that my favourite animal is a baby possum, or a joey. The face of a really little joey is so divine - so, so gorgeous..

I don't know why some people have children at all if they know that they can only take a few weeks off work..

You're not lonely when you're teaching, you're not quiet, you're laughing most of the time, you're having a wonderful time interacting with young peo….

If we are always reading aloud something that is more difficult than children can read themselves then when they come to that book later, or books li….

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 ….

I was the most Australian child ever in the world, even though my home was in Africa..

If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent-….

I think sometimes we rush through countries, ticking off the attractions, but that's missing the point..

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..