80 Reading Quotes for Kids

Looking to encourage a lifelong love of literature? Check out our favorite reading quotes for kids. (Warning: this article might contain magic.)
When those squiggles on the page bring new worlds to life, it’s nothing short of sorcery.

And now it’s time to pass on the secrets of this spell to your little one.

A good place to start?

These reading quotes for kids.

Chapter One of this story is: Why Reading Matters.

In this article: 📝

What is the importance of reading?
What are some quotes about reading?
Our favorite reading quotes for kids

What is the importance of reading?

There is a plethora of studies out there that talk about the importance of reading for child development.

This study, for example, found that reading to kids at home may mean that they know over a million more words by the time they reach kindergarten.

And this one showed that reading has all sorts of benefits from developing literacy to social skills.

And then of course there’s the fact that reading is actually magic.

Reading will open doors for your little one, introducing them to ideas that allow them to see other worlds and better understand this one.

There’s nothing quite like coming of age with a love for the page.

‌
‌
‌

What are some quotes about reading?

These children’s reading quotes come from the best minds out there — great authors, thinkers, and leaders.

They show just how important reading is, and what an awe-inspiring activity it can be to do together at home.

They also speak to the magic and adventure that only reading can bring, and why it’s important to foster a lifelong love of it.

Let’s explore.

Our favorite reading quotes for kids

Reading is fundamental quotes

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” — Lemony Snicket
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” — Frederick Douglass
“Once upon a time the famous physicist Albert Einstein was confronted by an overly concerned woman who sought advice on how to raise her small son to become a successful scientist. In particular she wanted to know what kinds of books she should read to her son.
‘Fairy Tales,’ Einstein responded without hesitation.
‘Fine, but what else should I read to him after that?’ the mother asked.
‘More fairy tales,’ Einstein stated.
‘And after that?’
‘Even more fairy tales,’ replied the great scientist, and he waved his pipe like a wizard pronouncing a happy end to a long adventure.” — Jack Zipes
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Joseph Addison
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” — Ray Bradbury
“One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.” — Malala Yousafzai
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” — Margaret Fuller
“Be awesome! Be a book nut!” — Dr. Seuss
“Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn’t be human beings at all.” — Philip Pullman
“Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible.” — Barack Obama
“Kids lose themselves in books, they find themselves there too.” — Lewis Keegan
“I cannot live without books.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” — Maya Angelou
“Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafon
“There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.” — May Ellen Chase
“Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.” — Arnold Lobel
“I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.” — Gary Paulsen
“I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.” — Bill Gates
“Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” — Holbrook Jackson
“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” — Harry S. Truman
“There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who have not found the right book.” — Frank Serafini
“Reading is an exercise in empathy. An exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” — Malorie Blackman
“Books are the quietest of friends. They are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” — Charles W. Eliot
“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope.” — Kofi Annan
“Read. Everything you can get your hands on. Read until words become your friends. Then when you need to find one, they will jump into your mind, waving their hands for you to pick them. And you can select whichever you like, just like a captain choosing a stickball team.” — Karen Witemeyer
“Reading is important, because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything.” — Tomie dePaola
“Let us read and let us dance—two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.” — Voltaire
“…the brain is like a muscle, and if you don’t exercise it by reading and doing creative stuff, it’ll get weak and mushy.” — Jeff Kinney
“Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.” — Jim Rohn
“Read, read, read.” — William Faulkner

Reading is a great adventure quotes

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” — Walt Disney
“There are many little ways to enlarge your world. Love of books is the best of all.” — Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
“Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them.” — Neil Gaiman
“Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” — Mary Schmich
“Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.’” — Helen Exley
“The whole world opened up to me when I learned to read.” — Mary McLeod Bethune
“You may have tangible wealth untold. Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be — I had a mother who read to me.” — Strickland Gillilan
“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.” — Mary Wortley Montagu
“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.” — Anna Quindlen
“There is no Frigate like a Book, To take us Lands away.” — Emily Dickinson
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.” — Anna Quindlen
“He that loves reading has everything within his reach.” — William Godwin
“It is books that are the key to the wide world; if you can’t do anything else, read all that you can.” — Jane Hamilton
“Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.” — Lloyd Alexander
“Readers are lucky – they will never be bored or lonely.” — Natalie Babbitt
“The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.” — Roald Dahl
“You can travel the world and never leave your chair when you read a book.” — Sherry K. Plummer
“Reading is a passport to countless adventures.” — Mary Pope Osbourne
“A reader lives a thousand lives, before he dies. […] The man who never reads lives only one.” — George R. R. Martin
“To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.” — A.C. Grayling

Reading with your children quotes

“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” — C.S. Lewis
“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won’t have as much censorship because we won’t have as much fear.” — Judy Blume
“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” — Emilie Buchwald
“Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.” — Dr. Seuss
“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.” — Arthur Conan Doyle
“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.” — Mem Fox
“Reading aloud with children is known to be the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills they will eventually require for learning to read.” — Marilyn Jager Adams
“From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover you have wings.” — Helen Hayes
“You are never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.” — Dr. Seuss
“One of the greatest gifts adults can give—to their offspring and to their society—is to read to children.” — Carl Sagan
“The greatest gift is a passion for reading.” — Elizabeth Hardwick
“Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again.” — Louisa May Alcott
“So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray,
go throw your TV set away.
And in its place you can install,
a lovely bookshelf on the wall.” — Roald Dahl

Reading is magical quotes

“You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book!” — Dr. Seuss
“A book is a magical thing that lets you travel to far-away places without ever leaving your chair.” — Katrina Mayer
“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.” — Marcel Proust
“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.” — James Russell Lowell
“Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.” — Kate DiCamillo
“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest [people] of the past centuries.” — René Descartes
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” — Stephen King
“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” — Victor Hugo
“An hour spent reading is one stolen from paradise.” — Thomas Wharton
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” — Jorge Luis Borges
“Fairy tales do not tell children dragons exist. Children already know the dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” — Neil Gaiman
“A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.” — Charles Baudelaire
“I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.” — Wislawa Szymborska
“It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.” — S.I. Hayakawa
“Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.” — Vera Nazarian
“A book, too, can be a star, ‘explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,’ a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” — Madeleine L’Engle

Happy reading!