Merrion Frances "Mem" Fox, AM (born Merrion Frances Partridge on 5 March 1946) is an Australian writer of children's books and an educationalist specialising in literacy. Fox is semi-retired and lives in Adelaide.
Books don't harm kids; they arm them.
The fastest way to teach a child to read is to teach them to write.
You experience other cultures to give you a kind of shock that makes you look at your own culture. You appreciate it more as a result of being out of it, but you also realise there are some things lacking in your culture.
I think sometimes we rush through countries, ticking off the attractions, but that's missing the point.
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 door.
I don't know why some people have children at all if they know that they can only take a few weeks off work.
I realized with grief that purposeless activities in language arts are probably the burial grounds of language development and that coffins can be found in most classrooms, including mine.
Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.
My mother was a very difficult woman to please. She was the sort of woman who thought that if I were praised I would get above myself.
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.
I have very little patience with children.
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 of their skin, I didn't notice the color of my skin and I have remembered that all my life.
The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading.
As everyone knows, nothing is sweeter than tiny baby fingers and chubby baby toes.
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 like that, they will be able to read them - which is why even a fifth grade teacher, even a tenth grade teacher, should still be reading to children aloud. There is always something that is too intractable for kids to read on their own.
I was the most Australian child ever in the world, even though my home was in Africa.
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.
Reading aloud and talking about what we're reading sharpens children's brains. It helps develop their ability to concentrate at length, to solve problems logically, and to express themselves more easily and clearly.
Writing a picture book is like writing 'War and Peace' in Haiku.