CBC Arts50%
Mac Barnett believes children’s literature deserves a grown-up conversation 52%
By Sabina Wex0%
5/14/2026, 8:20:18 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Indoctrination, and Negativity Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 27.5% saturation with 187 hits. Analysis detected 1,415 faulty-reasoning hits from 679 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 51.3% and a BS Rank of 52% (8,118 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 51.70% of the article peer group.
When Mac Barnett tells people that he’s a children’s author, they often ask the same question: “Do you think you'll ever write a real book?”
The reaction from the U.S.
National Ambassador for Young People's Literature is also always the same:
“I say no, because I'm furious,” he tells Q guest host Gill Deacon.
“And I say, ‘And by the way, kids' books are real books.’
And if you do not believe that children's books are real books, then you don't believe children are real people.”
Barnett points out that nobody would ask a pediatrician if they’re going to work with “real” adult bodies one day.
“There is this inconsistency… We think of pediatricians as specialists.
We want them to be the very smartest, to know everything an internist knows but also to have this specialized knowledge of the lives and bodies of kids,” he says.
“I don't know why we think that writing a kid’s book would be any easier, any less serious than writing a book for adults.”
In reaction to these infuriating conversations, Barnett did something he said he never would do: he wrote a book for grown-ups.
In Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children, Barnett argues that children’s literature ought to be taken as seriously as adult literature.
Barnett discovered the complexity of children’s books while he was in university, studying difficult medieval Icelandic poetry.
When he went to work as a camp counsellor during the summer, he realized that the children’s books he read to four-year-olds weren’t dissimilar to the Icelandic poetry he studied; they both were intertextual and meta-fictional.
Think of the sophistication of books such as Where the Wild Things Are or Goodnight Moon.
“There’s a reason that there’s such a rich history of experimental literature in children’s books,” Barnett explains.
“It’s because childhood itself is experimental, that is what you're doing.
You are figuring out the world, you are constantly thrown into situations where you don't understand the rules and you have to pay attention and figure them out — and that's what you have to do [when you read] a book.”
In Make Believe, Barnett argues that many modern children’s authors refuse to engage with children this way.
They write books at children rather than for children, focusing on moral instruction and pedagogy.
But the most popular children’s books talk with children.
For example, Harriet the Spy is about a girl who writes a burn book about her classmates, and they shun her when they discover it.
At the end of the book, Harriet’s nanny tells her to apologize to her classmates, even though she won’t mean it.
The nanny explains that because Harriet is a writer, she must observe the good and the bad in people, but also needs to play nice because she has to go to school and have a social life.
Barnett explains that the 1964 novel remains popular with kids because it’s “honest” and doesn’t turn away from the complexities of childhood.
“Darkness, bad behavior, feelings kids have, horrible things that kids see their classmates do every day, or maybe even do themselves….
When these things are excluded from literature, a kid is going to say, either, ‘My life is not reflected in books, so I'm going to find another form of art, another form of entertainment that reflects the full spectrum of who I am.’
“Or even worse, they might say… ‘I don't see any of my dark thoughts or these horrible things happening in books.
There must be something wrong with me.’
And that's a terrible thing.”
Listen to the full interview with Mac Barnett to hear him talk about his favourite children’s authors, his approach to writing for kids and what to do about the current literacy crisis.
His newest book, Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children, is available now.
The full interview with Marc Barnett is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power.
Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Marc Barnett produced by Ben Edwards.
Analysis
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