“Feed Me Pizza or I’ll Die”

The hilarious Twitter feed, Preschool Gems, is now a book

Leslie McCollom, the mastermind behind the Preschool Gems Twitter feed (163, 318 followers and counting) started working as a teacher in Portland, Oregon three years ago. Since then, she’s been treated to a “daily barrage of cracked wisdom” that she decided to record and share with the world, first on Twitter and now in a book. 

Preschool Gems: Love, Death, Magic, and Other Surprising Treasures from the Mouths of Babes is essentially a Kids say the Darndest Things for the digital age, covering everything from fashion—“These are my happy-mood shoes;” to philosophy—“He has the happiness of truth and I have the sadness,” “Life is but a bowl of nothing;” to travel—“If you go to Mexico, look for everything and see a lizard;” to the absurd—“I glow in the dark and I am now a bobcat.” McCollom’s book is an ode to the unfiltered nature of childhood: free minds ready to explore and interpret the world with reckless abandon. This makes them at once naïve, and wise, loving, and cruel. As McCollom explains in her introduction, “That’s the thing about kids: They are both wonderful and terrible. In every way they are far more troublesome and cruel than an adult, they are also exponentially more compassionate.” Click through the slideshow to see our top ten quotes from the book. What gems have you collected from your preschooler? —Ludovica Pellicioli