Children's

These Illustrated Neil Gaiman Quotes About Librarians Will Just Make You Want to Hug a Kitten

Illustrated Neil Gaiman quotes by Cartoonist Chris Riddell

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Johann Thorsson

Staff Writer

Johann Thorsson is a native of Iceland, but spends much of his time in Bookland. He has lived in a few parts of the world but currently lives in Iceland with a pretty woman and a mischievous son who resembles Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) more each day. He has a complicated but ultimately useless degree in bioinformatics from a very pretty college in England. His favorite books are 1984, Flowers for Algernon and The English Patient. He hopes one day to call himself a writer without feeling like he's just fooling himself. Blog: Johann Thorsson - On Book and Writing Twitter: @johannthors

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Cartoonist Chris Riddell illustrated some things Neil Gaiman said in a lecture about libraries, and they are just awesome.

Neil Gaiman’s love of libraries is well known and it is great to see Chris Riddell make them a source of inspiration.

I saw these when Mr. Gaiman was sharing them on Facebook and thought they were too wonderful not to share with you.

The Way Librarians Let You Read the Books You Want

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The quote above is from a lecture Neil Gaiman gave for the Reading Agency, delivered on Monday, October 14, 2013 at the Barbican in London. The Reading Agency’s annual lecture series was initiated in 2012 as a platform for leading writers and thinkers to share original, challenging ideas about reading and libraries.

I happen to really like the next sentence from that lecture:

“And when I had finished reading the children’s’ library I began on the adult books.”

About What Lovely People Librarians Are

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You can read the entire lecture from there the quotes above are taken here.

And as an added bonus, Riddell also illustrates Gaiman paraphrasing Albert Einstein. The wisdom goes deep:

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Fairy tales.

A post shared by Chris Riddell (@chris_riddell) on

For more Chris Riddell loveliness take a look at Illustrations to Unwritten Stories or his Doodle a Day.

If you ever found a great book at the library as a kid, I encourage you to share this post so others might be inspired to take their kids there.