Make Believe

“In his chatty, compulsively readable first book for adults, Mac Barnett champions his career choice and urges our culture to hold kids in higher esteem.… Kudos to Barnett.”

“Nuanced, thoughtful . . . a tribute to the possibilities and promise of children’s literature.”

“Four pages into this slim new volume of narrative theory, I began pumping my fists in the air like a roomful of elementary-schoolers when someone hits play on ‘Golden.’ A few pages later, I began texting quotes to friends and reading bits out loud to my family. . . . Barnett, an acclaimed author of children’s fiction, is already a well-loved figure in many homes, but Make Believe transforms the sly, direct voice of Barnett’s fiction into a sharp, ticklish, bracing polemic for adults. The book dismantles patronizing, outcome-oriented models of children’s media and argues instead that children deserve art just as much as adults do. The best art for children, Barnett posits, understands them as worthy, fully-formed people rather than half-finished projects in need of some polish, and this key belief drives his entire project.”

“A magnificent piece of writing—funny and sharp and true. Every adult should read it, whether or not they have a child. I loved it.”

“Recommended to every educator and every parent. They owe it to the kids in their care and to the kids they once were.”

“Barnett’s specialty is picture books, and Make Believe constitutes a full-throated defense of this form. Picture books, he argues, are not only “real books” (people he meets keep asking him when he’ll write one of those) but a real art form.”

“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. . . . 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.”

“‘Kids’ books merit grown-up conversation,’ children’s author Barnett asserts in his by turns grave and playful treatise…. It’s a poignant refresher for ‘dead dull finished grown-ups’ on childhood’s role as an ‘in-between place full of uncertainty.’”

“Barnett’s heavily footnoted, accessible academic style and passionate viewpoint will speak to anyone who read as a child or has read to a child.”