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.

"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

"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)

"'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

"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

"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

Publisher: Little Brown and Company

Pub date: 2026-05-05

Length: 112 pages