Leonard S. Marcus > Quotes

“Fantasy is storytelling with the beguiling power to transform the impossible into the imaginable, and to reveal our own “real” world in a fresh and truth-bearing light.”
― Leonard S. Marcus, The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy

“Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.”
― Leonard S. Marcus, You Can't Say That!: Writers for Young People Talk About Censorship, Free Expression, and the Stories They Have to Tell

“We spend so much time urging children to trust us to help them with their problems. Yet we don’t even have the courage to let them read books in which those problems are named for what they are, or to let them freely talk about those problems. So the question I have is this: Why should children trust us? That’s the part that I think the censors have not thought through carefully.”
― Leonard S. Marcus, You Can't Say That! Writers for Young People Talk About Censorship, Free Expression, and the Stories They Have to Tell

“Some mediocre ladies in influential positions are usually embarrassed by an unusual book and so prefer the old familiar stuff which doesn't embarrass them and also doesn't give the child one slight inkling of beauty and reality. This is most discouraging to a creative writer, like you, and also to a hardworking and devoted editor like me. I love most of my editor colleagues but I must confess that I get a little depressed and sad when some of their neat little items about a little girl in old Newburyport during the War of 1812 gets [sic] adopted by a Reading Circle.”
― Leonard S. Marcus

“Mitsumasa Anno : A child's mind, unlike an adult's, can absorb anything and accept any number of new ideas. For this reason, it is not always good to teach only "correct" ideas to children. Scientific understanding is important, but imagination should also be encouraged. When some adults see a rainbow, they think they must explain the color spectrum to a child. The sense of wonder at such things should come first.

Recently, I spoke to a group of schoolchildren in Sydney, Australia. I told them that I had been afraid to come "down under" to Sydney lest I fall off the earth on my way. They laughed and then explained to me that "the world is round but there are also some flat places where it is safe." These children did not yet know the difference between imagination and reality. It is important to let them imagine things in their own way for a while before teaching them differently.”
― Leonard S. Marcus, Show Me a Story!: Why Picture Books Matter: Conversations with 21 of the World's Most Celebrated Illustrators