ELISSA NADWORNY, HOST:
Mac Barnett is an author of children's books, otherwise known as books, including but not limited to "The First Cat In Space" graphic novel series, "Sam And Dave Dig A Hole," "The Great Zapfino," "Extra Yarn." He's also the current U.S. national ambassador for young people's literature, and he gets asked all the time when he plans on writing a book for adults.
MAC BARNETT: People say, when are you going to write a real book, by which they mean an adult book. There's a list of other indignities that children's book authors endure - people saying that they've always wanted to write a kids' book because it seems so easy, people telling you, you're just a big kid.
NADWORNY: (Laughter).
BARNETT: People telling you that your job is cute, people asking if you wrote "The Cat In The Hat," which was written by Dr. Seuss, who has been dead since 1991.
NADWORNY: Well, the good news is Mac Barnett's finally written a real book. It's called "Make Believe," and it's a book for adults about books for children.
Hello.
BARNETT: Hi. Thanks for having me.
NADWORNY: Yeah. OK. So why did you want to write a book for adults about books for children?
BARNETT: I think that the best way to get kids to love reading is to give them books they love to read. I think we tend to think of children's literature as literature with training wheels.
NADWORNY: Simple.
BARNETT: Simple books for simple humans, and kids are not simple. They are so complex. They are so sophisticated, and they really need, like, a literature that is as rich and varied as their lives are.
NADWORNY: Yeah. So you have what you call a grand unifying theory of children's literature.
BARNETT: Yeah.
NADWORNY: Could you share it with us?
BARNETT: Here we go. A children's book is a book written for children.
NADWORNY: Profound.
BARNETT: Thank you.
NADWORNY: (Laughter).
BARNETT: Yeah.
NADWORNY: Is kind of what you're saying just that children's books have to have a good story?
BARNETT: You know what? They don't even have to be stories. Adults desire to teach kids lessons to make a lot of didactic fiction. The first thing that gets pushed out is storytelling. But it doesn't have to be a story. It doesn't have to be anything - poems. They can be a little observations. A picture book, especially, can hold, like, an idea, a moment, a feeling. Part of it is just, like, really opening the aperture, trying to make this as expansive as possible.
NADWORNY: One of the phrases I was struck by in the book is good books for bad children.
BARNETT: Yeah.
NADWORNY: Where does this phrase come from, and why do you like it?
BARNETT: This comes from an editor, Ursula Nordstrom. She published "Where The Wild Things Are," "Harriet The Spy," "Goodnight Moon." She worked for Harper. And the suits at Harper invited her to lunch because she was making them so much money. And they said, congratulations. We'd like to give you a promotion. You could be an adult editor. And she said - she told them, no, thank you. Why would I want to make a book for dead, dull, finished adults? I'm going to go back to work making good books for bad children. It's funny. I think that phrase is so rich.
We also don't know exactly what she meant. I spend a lot of time just thinking it over, and I've had different definitions. At least where I've settled now on it is she's taking kids as they are. She's not trying to improve them. She's not thinking about turning them into future adults, productive citizens. She's taking their real lives, their moral complexity and just making stories for them.
NADWORNY: I want to talk a little bit about "Goodnight Moon." I felt like your book really reintroduced me to it.
BARNETT: Cool.
NADWORNY: It's written by Margaret Wise Brown...
BARNETT: Yeah.
NADWORNY: ...And illustrated by Clement Hurd. Can you tell me about what stands out to you about this book?
BARNETT: Margaret Wise Brown - first of all, I consider her, like, one of the great modernist poets. "Goodnight Moon" - it's an experimental poem with pictures. Like, it's a radical work of literature. You know, if you look at the pictures, they're very strange. The balloon is in, like, the most annoying place for a balloon to possibly be in. Things are disappearing on and off a drying rack. An old lady, who's actually a bunny but is described as an old lady, is, like, in the room and out of the room. It's very off-kilter.
And the text does similar things, too. It's a very unstable poem. You get so used to the rhythm of a picture and then words that describe the picture. And then midway through, you turn the page, and it just says, goodnight nobody, and there's not a picture at all.
NADWORNY: Nothing.
BARNETT: Nothing. It's the void. It's the sublime. It's...
NADWORNY: It's the thing you're scared of.
BARNETT: That's what I think, too. For me, as a kid, going to sleep was so intense. And then the next page, after that, goodnight mush.
NADWORNY: Silly.
BARNETT: Yeah, silly. And it's a bowl of mush. And it's so funny. It's like - I compare it to, like, when you almost get into a car accident, and then you're like (dramatic laughter) - that joy that comes after a very scary moment. And then mush also initiates that shh, shh, shh sound that lulls us to sleep. And I think that that book encapsulates a very complex truth that kids know well. Going to bed is eerie, uncomfortable, strange, but it's going to be OK. It does both those things, and it does paradox so well.
I spend a lot of time with that picture book, one, to show that a children's book can benefit from a really rigorous reading, but, two, to make the argument that actually the reason that kids love it is because of these experimental moves.
NADWORNY: Well, and it also talks to this idea that kids' books don't need plot role models, happy endings, lessons to be good.
BARNETT: Totally. I mean, you go to - even your question earlier, like, is it a story? Is "Goodnight Moon" a story? To the extent that it is, to the extent that you could describe - if I said, like, what is "Goodnight Moon" about, like, what would you say?
NADWORNY: Going to sleep.
BARNETT: Yeah. A rabbit goes to sleep.
NADWORNY: You write that a high percentage - I think it's like 94.7%. Is that the number you land on?
BARNETT: Mm-hmm.
NADWORNY: Of kids' books are crud.
BARNETT: Yeah.
NADWORNY: What do you mean by that?
BARNETT: I wish I hadn't written it that way.
NADWORNY: Why?
BARNETT: I don't - it was hurtful to people who make kids' books. And it comes in a section that is talking about how kids' books are unfairly dismissed. I talk about this thing called Sturgeon's law, which is how a science fiction writer replied to somebody standing up and saying, why do you write sci-fi? Ninety percent of sci-fi is crud. And he said, 90% of everything is crud. I think that, you know, in my effort to make a point about kids' books being dismissed, I got...
NADWORNY: You kind of dismissed them...
BARNETT: Yeah.
NADWORNY: ...A little bit.
BARNETT: I did. I was overzealous. I was careless, and I was hyperbolic. And I feel really sorry about it.
NADWORNY: It comes in this environment where the majority of books that are being challenged in libraries and schools are children's books.
BARNETT: Yeah.
NADWORNY: And so I wonder - that context - how that fits in with the criticism of the genre.
BARNETT: As I said, we need to open the aperture. It's not about making less books - not for me. It's about making more books - more books, more kinds of books, more voices in the room. That is when literature is humming to me. That is what is exciting. It is why I spent so much time in school libraries. And I tell kids, like, look at these books. Like, these are books by so many different people who led different lives in different times, different places, and they all care about different things. And if they write a story and we pick that up, we might just find ourselves interested in the things that they're interested in.
NADWORNY: Mac Barnett is the ninth U.S. national ambassador for young people's literature, appointed by the Library of Congress and every child reader. His first book for adults is "Make Believe." Thanks, Mac.
BARNETT: Thank you so much for having me.
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