“There is, of course, this matter of being afraid to give freedom to young children. I believe they have that within themselves which makes it possible for them to meet the world and life and interpret it more nearly aright than can we. They carry with them that inheritance of faith and imagination undimmed; and that tremendous surging desire to know, to see, to feel and to do, which is rarely betrayed.

In our desire as adults to lay hold of a child’s life, to grip it, mold it to our own values, we do unwittingly a great harm. We confront children with our own fears, our own lack of faith; to safeguard them we attempt to thrust between them and life those many false illusions which we have picked up in our own twisting, turning way.

Children take a far more advantageous highroad.

A Free Child is a happy child; and there is nothing more lovely.”

— Ruth Sawyer, in her acceptance speech upon winning the Newbery Award for Roller Skates, 1936

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