Best Reading Quotes For Kids 

Reading can open the door to endless possibilities. Whether you want to inspire a love of reading or support your child’s existing joy in the consumption of books, sharing quotes about reading can be a positive, bonding experience.

Read them together, send them via text, or print them out and display them in your home.

49 Reading Quotes for Kids

“The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.” – Mary McLeod Bethune

“Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them.” – Neil Gaiman

“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

“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

“My alma mater was books, a good library … I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” – Malcolm X

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it, and you’re inside the mind of another person…” – Carl Sagan

“Readers are lucky – they will never be bored or lonely.” – Natalie Babbitt

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King

“Books showed me there were possibilities in life, that there were actually people like me living in a world I could not only aspire to but attain. Reading gave me hope. For me, it was the open door.” – Oprah Winfrey

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” – Daniel Handler, also known as Lemony Snicket

“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” – C.S. Lewis

“Books train your imagination to think big.” – Taylor Swift

“I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.” – J.K. Rowling

“There is a wonder in reading Braille that the sighted will never know: to touch words and have them touch you back.” – Jim Fiebig

“I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.” – Benedict Cumberbatch

“Comics are a gateway drug to literacy.” – Art Spiegelman

“I read a book one day, and my whole life was changed.” – Orhan Pamuk

“Reading is important. Books are important. Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)” – Neil Gaiman

“I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.” – Wislawa Szymborska

“Libraries remind us that truth isn’t about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information.” – Barack Obama

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.” – Anna Quindlen

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” – Albert Einstein

“Once you learn to read, you will forever be free.” – Frederick Douglass

“Books break the shackles of time – proof that humans can work magic.” – Carl Sagan

“Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.” – Helen Exley

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” – Mason Cooley

“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope.” – Kofi Annan

“If you are going to get anywhere in life, you have to read a lot of books.” – Roald Dahl

“Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn

“So many books, so little time.” – Frank Zappa

“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

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

“When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.” – Margaret Walker

“Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn’t be human beings at all.” – Phillip Pullman

“There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read — unless it be reading while you eat.” – E. Nesbit

“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

“From an early age, books were my constant companions and my local library, a place I could find a new friend on every shelf.” – Sarah Jessica Parker

“Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader than the first book that finds its way to his heart.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“I even love the smell of books.” – Adriana Trigiani

“A book is the most effective weapon against intolerance and ignorance.” – Lyndon Baines Johnson

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan

“Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait in line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.” – David Levithan

“Reading for me is spending time with a friend.” – Gary Paulsen

“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better. It’s an enormous force for good.” – Barack Obama

“I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp.” – JK Rowling

“When I was 7, my proudest possession would have been my bookshelf ’cause I had alphabetized all of the books on my bookshelf.” – Neil Gaiman

“I love the printed word and have always appreciated the unique connection between author and reader.” – Oprah Winfrey

“Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” – Mary Schmich

“Reading brings us unknown friends.” – Honore de Balzac

Share the Words and Inspire Your Child

A love of reading can be the first step on a road of endless opportunities. By sharing these quotes, perhaps you can help your child discover the joy of books and stories and the knowledge they hold.

Print them out and display them in your home, or write them on a gift card holder wrapped around a library card. Whatever you do, share them. This may be the best thing you ever give your child.