"The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard, where time exists yet stands still, where people talk and I tell them what to say, is exciting and rewarding"
About this Quote
Van Allsburg makes children’s books sound like godhood with scissors and glue, and that’s the point. “A small world between two pieces of cardboard” reduces the grand project of fiction to an object you can hold, shut, shelve, and reopen. It’s a quietly radical claim: storytelling isn’t an airy “imagination” concept, it’s engineered. Cardboard implies craft, constraint, and a kind of blue-collar magic. The book is a machine for wonder, not a mystical fog.
The real charge arrives in the time paradox: “time exists yet stands still.” Picture books and illustrated narratives are uniquely good at this. A page freezes a moment, yet the reader animates it at their own pace, looping back, pausing on a face, rereading a line until it changes. Van Allsburg’s worlds (often uncanny, poised between ordinary and surreal) thrive on that suspension: the eerie stillness of an image that nevertheless contains motion, consequence, threat.
Then comes the sly power fantasy: “people talk and I tell them what to say.” He doesn’t apologize for control; he names it as “exciting and rewarding.” The subtext is an adult’s awareness that authorial authority can be intimate, even mischievous. In children’s literature especially, that control carries responsibility: you’re shaping a first encounter with narrative logic, with fear, with possibility. The line admits the manipulation while celebrating the tenderness of it: an author builds a pocket universe, invites you in, and then choreographs your time inside.
The real charge arrives in the time paradox: “time exists yet stands still.” Picture books and illustrated narratives are uniquely good at this. A page freezes a moment, yet the reader animates it at their own pace, looping back, pausing on a face, rereading a line until it changes. Van Allsburg’s worlds (often uncanny, poised between ordinary and surreal) thrive on that suspension: the eerie stillness of an image that nevertheless contains motion, consequence, threat.
Then comes the sly power fantasy: “people talk and I tell them what to say.” He doesn’t apologize for control; he names it as “exciting and rewarding.” The subtext is an adult’s awareness that authorial authority can be intimate, even mischievous. In children’s literature especially, that control carries responsibility: you’re shaping a first encounter with narrative logic, with fear, with possibility. The line admits the manipulation while celebrating the tenderness of it: an author builds a pocket universe, invites you in, and then choreographs your time inside.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Evidence:
... The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard , where time exists yet stands still , where people talk and I tell them what to say , is exciting and rewarding . It is also rewarding to receive mail from people ... |
| Featured | This quote was our Quote of the Day on March 9, 2023 |
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