Make Believe - by Mac Barnett (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Make Believe is bestselling children's author Mac Barnett's rallying cry for art and imagination, and a celebration of the power of storytelling in all our lives. It's an incisive, intimate, and timely invitation to approach children's literature not only as an art form worthy of deep study and criticism, but as a portal into the lives of the children. And at a time when we are faced with a national literacy crisis, he champions the profound joys of literature and the importance of reading for pleasure.

What if children are a great audience for art?
What if they are in fact better equipped to engage deeply with stories than adults?
What if humans' ability to appreciate art is, if not innate, awakened early in childhood?

Well, then we'd better do our best to make some good kids' books.

Written with humor and academic rigor, Make Believe reads like a letter from your smartest and funniest friend.

Includes spreads from Goodnight Moon and Busy, Busy Town, illustrations by Caldecott Medalist Jon Klassen, and cover art by celebrated illustrator Carson Ellis.

Review Quotes

LibraryReads Notable Nonfiction Pick


A New Manifesto for Children's Literature:

"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." --The New York Times

"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."--New York Magazine

"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."--Katherine Rundell, author of Impossible Creatures

"Mac Barnett is an American treasure and his thesis here is right: the great books for young readers are not educational pamphlets, they're great (and weird and funny and new) stories. Having witnessed kids writing their own stories for the last 25 years, I've seen that what they're interested in is not trite lessons and tidy morals -- and let's say it, propaganda -- but narratives involving talking snack foods and interplanetary royalty. Kids are very strange and original beings, and the books we send their way should be strange and original, too. Mac has shown this brilliantly in his own work, and here lays out an urgent path for the rest of us."--Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

"Full of wit and piercing insights . . . It will have readers laughing out loud, reminiscing about their own childhood books, examining their approach to reading with kids. . . . Recommended also to every educator and every parent. They owe it to the kids in their care and to the kids they once were." --Library Journal (starred review)

"Slim yet soaring . . . 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."--Booklist

"'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.'"--Publishers Weekly

"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." --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Mac Barnett is the ninth U.S. National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, appointed by the Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader. He's a New York Times-bestselling author of stories for children and the writer, with Jon Klassen, of Looking at Picture Books, a newsletter for adults about how picture books work. Barnett's work has been translated into more than 30 languages and sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. His books have won many prizes, including two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Awards, three E.B. White Read Aloud Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Germany's Jugendliteraturpreis, China's Chen Bochui International Children's Literature Award, The Netherlands' Silver Griffel, and Italy's Premio Orbil. He lives in Oakland, California.