'Book-Shaming' Won’t Solve the Children’s Literacy Crisis

Mac Barnett is a best-selling author of children’s books, including a suite of droll, spare picture-book collaborations with the illustrator Jon Klassen, and the whimsical “First Cat in Space” series of graphic novels, illustrated by Shawn Harris. Barnett is also the current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and, last month, he published his first book for adults, titled “Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children.” A hubbub sprang up on social media around a passage of the book in which Barnett floats the possibility that “94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud.” (Barnett was riffing on an old quotation by the science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, who was making the point that the vast majority of works in any literary genre are subpar.) Some authors, librarians, and miscellaneous posters were outraged that Barnett would pour scorn on the very field that he is officially tasked with championing. A petition of complaint to the Library of Congress and the nonprofit Every Child a Reader, the two bodies that appoint the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, attracted a few hundred signatures.