What does it mean to write a great work of children’s literature? For author Mac Barnett, it means pushing boundaries, embracing the subversive, and avoiding preachiness. “Art and didacticism…they don’t go well together,” he tells Kirkus via Zoom from his home in Oakland, California, where he lives with his wife and son. Didactic books, he says, see “kids as people who just fundamentally need improving, who need molding, who need to be turned into good citizens and adults. And it looks at literature as basically a tool and a tool that is useful for adults.…I just think that’s anti-book and anti-kid.”
With more than 70 children’s books under his belt, Barnett, 43, certainly has strong opinions about kid lit as well as the power to shape conversations about it. As the national ambassador for young people’s literature—a position to which he was appointed by the librarian of Congress early last year—he’s been touring and delivering lectures across the country. And this May, he released his first book for adults, Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children (Little, Brown), a manifesto on what he thinks children’s literature should be. (It was originally published in Italian in 2024 as La porta segreta.)
One declaration in the book swiftly drew the attention of critics, the head-turning assertion that “94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud.” The statement was a reference to author Theodore Sturgeon’s 1958 defense of the often-maligned science fiction genre: “Ninety percent of everything is crud.…The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and it is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere.” Barnett is even tougher on children’s books; he notes, “I have a nagging fear that children’s literature suffers from a slightly higher crud percentage than literature as a whole.”
Many in the children’s lit community took issue with this statement—and with Barnett’s assertions of what makes for excellence in children’s literature. In Instagram and Facebook posts on May 5—the day the book was released—children’s author Tracey Baptiste (The Jumbies, Kid X) wrote, “A very small group of people have always decided what is worthy. This 94.7% feels similarly stingy.”
Baptiste is especially critical of Barnett’s views on what he deems didactic literature. Expanding on her social media posts, Baptiste told Kirkus by email, “The label has often been used to dismiss books by marginalized creators whose work fills gaps the ‘canon’ has long ignored. When we tell stories rooted in our cultures or retell familiar narratives through new lenses, that work is often judged as instructional rather than artistic. Meanwhile, stories centered on European perspectives have always been treated as universal.”
Barnett’s “crud” statement lands at an especially fraught moment. “The industry is under enormous strain,” Baptiste said. “Book bans, political attacks, fewer school visits, lost income, and the targeting of librarians and educators have created an exhausting atmosphere. For creators whose work is already vulnerable to censorship, it didn’t feel like an abstract literary argument. It felt like another blow at a moment when the ground beneath us feels unstable.”
She isn’t alone in her criticism; more than 400 children’s book creators and educators, angered and saddened,
He added, “As national ambassador for young people’s literature, I have a responsibility to uplift and that sentence missed the mark. The truth is, there are so many amazing books for kids that come out every single day from my contemporaries in the field, and it is up to each child to decide which stories speak to them. The best thing that adults can do is support that exploration.”
As Barnett had explained during our Zoom call, he sees kid lit as one of the few opportunities for adults to truly understand how children see the world, to upend hierarchies—at least for the length of a story. “It is often necessary for us to be in a position of authority over kids, but it is not the only way that adults and kids can interact,” he says. “And I think that a picture book is one of the few places that adults and children regularly meet as equals.”
He’s observed that young people typically have a stronger visual literacy than adults—and that kids often notice things in picture books that escape grown-ups. “Picture books often operate in the way that the world operates,” he says, “there’s some tension between text and image. The words don’t tell the full story, and in fact, sometimes the pictures are contradicting the words.”
That tension encapsulates an incredibly common childhood experience: “an adult sitting in front of you, usually an adult who has some power over you…and telling you that the world is a certain way, while you can clearly see that the world is a little bit different from that.”
Many of his works have a metafictive bent, acknowledging that readers are active participants. Consider his wickedly funny picture book Battle Bunny, co-written by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Matthew Myers. The premise: A boy named Alex is gifted a cloyingly sweet book about a bunny whose friends have apparently forgotten his birthday; Alex goes on to write and draw over the existing text and art, transforming a saccharine tale into his own story of a belligerent rabbit who literally wages war on his fellow forest denizens.
Battle Bunny reflects Barnett’s own resistance to what he considers to be preachy, message-heavy fare; it also recognizes that children take part in the reading process by physically marking up their books or even creating their own versions of stories. “It’s most exciting when [a reader] brings their intelligence and experience and figures out what the story means to them,” he says.
He stresses that he’s motivated, above all, by a commitment to reshaping how adults view children’s literature—in particular, the picture book, a form he says is unfairly dismissed. “It deserves to stand on the same shelf as the novel, the poem, the short story,” he says. “But not everybody sees it as a great literary form, and part of that is because adults don’t understand how picture books work.…Adults underestimate the picture book because they underestimate kids.”
Barnett has spent much of his time as ambassador evangelizing for the format. Though it remains to be seen how he will use his platform for the remainder of his tenure, he emphasizes a commitment to literature that allows all children to feel seen: “When I was writing Make Believe, I wanted to remind adults that children deserve art and stories that reflect their lives. Children’s books must be as varied as the lives of the children who read them, and our definition of children’s books must be expansive. It’s about making more kinds of books with more voices, more perspectives, more ways of telling stories. That is when literature feels alive to me.”
Many in the kid lit community emphasize that it will take more than mere words for Barnett to truly make amends. “The hurt was deep and widespread, particularly among creators who already feel precarious,” says Baptiste. “Repair will require listening, accountability, and a visible effort to rebuild trust. As someone in a leadership role, the next steps matter as much as the apology itself.”
Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.
