The picture book holds an odd distinction. It’s both universally beloved (who doesn’t have at least one treasured memory of a read-aloud?) and criminally underrated; I’ve met countless adults who dismiss these tales as merely sweet or adorable.

So I was thrilled to spend an evening in the company of two people who truly understand picture books. Last December, New York City’s 92nd Street Y hosted a conversation between author Mac Barnett and actor Jennifer Garner, who, as ambassador for Save the Children USA, promotes literacy. As the national ambassador for young people’s literature, Barnett has made it his mission to uplift the picture book—and to push adults beyond their assumptions about this format. “We have this mammalian instinct. We want to protect kids,” he said. “Often, we think children’s books have to have false cheer. And that’s dishonest.”

The best picture books manage to be both honest and bolstering—a tough balancing act. Consider Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, in which a young rabbit bids goodnight to everything from a little mouse to the stars. After Garner read the book aloud to the audience, Barnett highlighted surreal details in Clement Hurd’s artwork: a pair of socks that disappear from a drying rack, an old woman who appears out of nowhere. It all evokes the strangeness of falling asleep, of losing consciousness—an experience that can feel like a kind of death. Focusing on a page with no illustrations (“Goodnight nobody”), Barnett said, “This is the absence of everything. This is absolute emptiness. This is, I think, one of the scariest things we [confront] as humans.”

But, as he and Garner both noted, the moment is followed by the bunny saying goodnight to a bowl of mush—a comforting image. The book, added Barnett, “uses poetry and…art to say something true: This is weird, this is unsettling—but also, it’s going to be OK. And that’s why this is the goodnight book.”

Indeed, some of the most powerful picture books dare to get dark. A children’s librarian I know told me she initially worried that Cecilia Heikkilä’s The Slightly Spooky Tale of Fox and Mole, translated from Swedish by Polly Lawson (Floris, 2025), was too scary for her library’s collection. In the book, a kindhearted fox, fed up with his friend’s thoughtlessness, transforms into a lurching, yellow-eyed creature. It’s a scene that arguably veers into very spooky territory, but Heikkilä uses grotesque imagery to plumb the seemingly monstrous emotions that children are often taught to suppress.

Leigh Bardugo’s The Invisible Parade (Little, Brown; 2025) centers on a grieving girl who wanders away from Día de los Muertos festivities and encounters four skeletal horsemen. John Picacio’s haunting artwork will unnerve readers, but his willingness to depict loss as it truly is—scary, even ugly—will assure them that they aren’t alone in their pain.

Honesty makes for a picture book that will linger. As Barnett put it, “Children’s literature, like any great literature, tells the truth about the world. But children’s literature’s special obligation is to tell the truth about what it’s like to be a child in a way that is recognizable and authentic to a child.” Take heed, kid lit creators.  

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.