Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children

“Kids’ books merit grown-up conversation,” children’s author Barnett (Rumpelstiltskin) asserts in his by turns grave and playful treatise. Lamenting that there’s “almost no serious critical attention” paid to this “widely read, deeply loved, highly profitable literature,” Barnett urges adult readers to reflect on how “we control the production, reception, and consumption of the books kids read.” He goes on to deliver a stream of insights (“Children’s publishing operates without any meaningful participation from children”) mixed with tongue-in-cheek observations (“Children are terrible customers. They have no real income.... Many of my readers cannot, technically, read”). Barnett’s observations include that the book-buying habits of adults, rooted in their own nostalgia, have kept decades-old children’s titles in print; that the more “didactic” branch of American children’s publishing has “beget a hulking kindness industrial complex”; and that the “poetic achievement” of Goodnight Moon exemplifies what he believes to be the highest goal of children’s literature—to provide striking observations of the small, daily “hard things children must do alone,” such as going to sleep. (“To have your worries validated... is such a rare gift when you’re a kid,” he notes.) It’s a poignant refresher for “dead dull finished grown-ups” on childhood’s role as an “in-between place full of uncertainty.” (May)