MAKE BELIEVE

Celebrating the “boundless genius of children.”

Children’s book author Barnett, the ninth national ambassador for Young People’s Literature, here argues for the place of children’s literature in human social development. He makes a case for fantasy and the imagination as the sites of growth. But Barnett offers not a sociology of reading or a history of writing. Instead, he gives us conversational essays on wonder. This is not a work of scholarship; it’s a meditation on what gives life meaning. The author’s voice comes alive, as if he’s talking to you over coffee. Much of the book moves through association: “Just as the pediatrician cares for our children’s bodies, the kids’ book author attends to our children’s souls.” He compares one strain of children’s literature to propaganda—didactic lessons laid down from above. Such books have value, not for the child reader but for “the adults who buy them and who find themselves flattered, and their rules reinforced, in the books’ pages.” And so, there are bad books for good children, and good books for bad children. Barnett writes, “Since the invention of the printing press, children’s books have been a battleground between those who want to tell kids what to do and those who want to tell them stories.” Barnett is clearly in the storytelling camp, and the highlight of his book is an affectionate reading of Margaret Wise Brown’s classic, Goodnight Moon. He calls the book “right and true, a bedtime book that actually feels like bedtime,” and what we realize as Barnett rises to his theme is that his goal is not so much to describe but to convince. For, in this church of storytelling, we are sinners who believe our job is to mold the child like clay. Instead, let’s grace the child with joy and, in the process, find the playful child in us.

A loving sermon on the rewards of children’s books.