In May 2026, Mac Barnett, celebrated children’s book author and the current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, published his first book for adults, Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children. The book was met with glowing reviews from Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and The New York Times. It was, by all accounts, a passionate love letter to children’s literature. And then a single line set the field on fire.

In it, Barnett shared what he called “Barnett’s Addendum to Sturgeon’s Law”: that perhaps 94.7 percent of children’s books are “crud.” The quote spread across social media, and Barnett found himself at the center of one of the largest controversies in the children’s literature community, one with consequences far beyond bruised feelings.

As for why you may be reading this, the answer is simple: as two school librarians, professors of children’s literature, and just plain lovers of children’s literature, we felt we could not remain silent.

A Book That Champions What It Undermines

The irony is almost too painful to ignore. Barnett’s introduction to Make Believe is a funny, fervent argument for taking children’s literature seriously. He speaks openly about his charge as National Ambassador to “go forth and champion children’s books,” not just by talking to children about the importance of reading, but by convincing adults of the power of children’s books and the brilliance of the kids who read them. He acknowledges head-on that while “children’s books are widely read, deeply loved, highly profitable literature,” they rarely receive serious critical attention. “Children’s books,” he writes, “are often misunderstood, dismissed, and ignored.” (Barnett, pgs. 2-3, 2026)

And then, in trying to make a point, he dismissed them himself.

To his credit, Barnett did not hide from the backlash. As reported by Michael Schaub in Kirkus Reviews (Schaub, 2026), Barnett acknowledged the harm: “First of all, I want to acknowledge the passage I wrote is hurtful, especially to people who work hard making books for kids. I understand why people are upset and feel betrayed. In trying to make a point, I got hyperbolic and glib. I was wrong. I’m truly sorry.”

The apology may be sincere. But the damage is done. In an era when clickbait headlines and confirmation bias shape what people see and believe, subtlety is lost. This one sentence has become the soundbite, and book banners and critics of children’s literature did not even have to do the work themselves. The National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature did it for them.

For much of the early twenty-first century, the landscape of children’s publishing was stubbornly homogeneous. Despite decades of calls for broader representation, the percentage of children’s books depicting non-white individuals remained at approximately 10 percent (Dahlen, 2020). This is a number that held frustratingly steady year after year, even as the children in our schools and libraries grew increasingly diverse.

That began to change around 2014, driven in large part by a grassroots movement that refused to accept the status quo. Following the announcement of a panel of all-white, all-male children’s authors at BookCon, authors and publishing insiders launched the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks, which grew into a formal nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting diversity across children’s literature and publishing (We Need Diverse Books, 2014).

The movement created real momentum and real books. Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming gave young readers a memoir told in luminous verse. Jason Reynolds built an entire universe of young people navigating race, poverty, and identity, from Ghost to Long Way Down to Stamped, co-written with Ibram X. Kendi. Yuyi Morales gave  Dreamers, a love letter to libraries and belonging. Alex Gino gave us George, now Melissa, a book that immediately made the ALA’s most challenged list, which tells you everything you need to know about both its importance and its threat to the status quo.

Data on books by and about people of color and from First/Native Nations published for children and teens, compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, shows that after a long period of relative stagnancy, the number of children’s books by and about BIPOC authors and characters began to increase around 2015, and by 2020, five years later, the number of books by or about a person of color had tripled. The percentage of books authored by Black creators rose from 5.7% in 2019 to 13.4% in 2022, and Asian representation climbed from 10.9% to 18.4% in the same period (CCBC, 2023). In 2024, for the first time, more than half of the titles received by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center had significant BIPOC content (University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, 2025).

These numbers represent real authors, real stories, and real children finally seeing themselves on library shelves. But the work is far from finished, and the gains are more fragile than the statistics suggest. As We Need Diverse Books founder Ellen Oh (Marek, 2024) has noted, the organization’s very visible success is also precisely why book bans have risen in recent years.

A Field Already Under Siege

Barnett’s comment did not land in a vacuum. It landed in a field that is already fighting for its life.

According to the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, there were 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025 alone (American Library Association, 2023). Since 2021, book challenges have risen to record levels, and few school districts or school librarians make it through a year without facing at least one. School library positions are being eliminated across the country (Lance & Kachel, 2021). The books pulled from shelves first are disproportionately those by authors of color and LGBTQIA+ authors, the very voices that have been working hardest to ensure that all children can see themselves in the books they read.

Into that climate, the person appointed to champion children’s literature handed its critics a ready-made weapon.

Who Gets to Decide What Is “Crud”?

Underlying all of this is a question worth taking seriously: who gets to decide what is valuable in children’s literature?

Society has long dismissed things made for young people, as though books written specifically for children cannot be of the same quality or importance as those written for adults. But today’s books for young readers have traveled a long way from the instructional religious texts of the eighteenth century. They are rich in language, art, and storytelling. They are often a child’s first introduction to the diverse world around them, spaces where young readers can safely explore identity, family, courage, and belonging, and begin to develop empathy.

Children’s literature also makes room for all of it: the silly, the scary, the real. It can be sophisticated or simple. Young readers love the gross, the ridiculous, and the unexpected. Who are we to dismiss their interests and passions as unworthy?

The authors want their books read. Publishers are driven by what sells, and while we hope they aim for quality, we know they prioritize what is popular and marketable. And yet authors, publishers, and librarians share a common goal: we want children to read. Achieving that depends on offering a wide range of books where children can see themselves, immerse themselves, and, most importantly, enjoy themselves.

The Books I Couldn’t Find:  Arlene’s Recollections

For me, Arlene, this conversation is not theoretical. As a child of a Puerto Rican mother and a Jewish father, I was a voracious reader. Books were not just entertainment; they were my friends. They provided companionship, discovery, and escape. But growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, the choices available in children’s literature were far more limited than they are today.

I do not remember seeing characters who reflected my experience or my family. I remember searching but rarely finding. What I did find were stereotypes. If a character was Puerto Rican, I could count on them being poor, speaking broken English, or being connected in one way or another to crime or dysfunction. There was little room for stories about joy, tradition, humor, food, music, faith, or the love of family that shaped my own life. An entire community flattened into a narrow view.

That absence leaves marks on children, even when they cannot yet express it.

One of the moments that has stayed with me most vividly came not from a book, but from television. I remember the excitement I felt learning that Juan Epstein from the 1970s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter was both Puerto Rican and Jewish. He was my brother, my sister, he was me.

It took me years to fully understand the impact that the lack of representation had on me as a reader and as a child. As our library shelves began filling with the beautiful stories that reflected a wider range of cultures, languages, identities, and experiences, I felt a shift within me. These books celebrated traditions instead of stereotypes. They showed families that looked and sounded like the real families I knew and grew up with. They allowed children to exist as they are. In many ways, each one of those books healed something in me. They healed the child who spent years reading without ever really being seen.

Returning to First Principles

For librarians and advocates of children’s literature, this moment calls us back to the foundational principles of our profession. S.R. Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science offer a framework for how to respond:

  1. Books are for use.
  2. Every reader his book.
  3. Every book its reader.
  4. Save the time of the reader.
  5. A library is a growing organism.

These principles recognize that not every book will appeal to every person and that children are entitled to access a diverse range of works. Rather than asking which books are “crud,” the Five Laws redirect us toward the right question: which book is right for this reader, right now?

That is the work of school librarians. That is the work Barnett himself was appointed to champion. And that is the work that becomes harder every time a headline, even an unintentional one, gives ammunition to those who would rather see fewer books on shelves, not more.

What Can We Do Now?

One of the most important things the children’s literature community can do now is refuse to become cynical about children’s books. Librarians, teachers, authors, illustrators, publishers, parents, and readers all share a responsibility not only to defend children’s literature, but to actively celebrate it.

School librarians, public librarians, and teachers must continue doing what they have always done best: connecting children with books. Continue the book talks. Continue the displays, the read-alouds, the classroom libraries, the reading challenges, the story times, and the passionate hand-selling of books to reluctant readers. Continue placing the right story into the right child’s hands at the right moment.

And in doing so, we must beware of book snobbery.

Not every child’s entry point into literature will be considered “serious” or “literary” by adults. One child’s Shakespeare may very well be Captain Underpants. A graphic novel, a silly series book, a heavily illustrated nonfiction title, or a joke-filled early chapter book may be the text that transforms a child from someone who can read into someone who wants to read. That distinction matters.

Children do not become lifelong readers because every book they read is a masterpiece. They become readers because someone helped them discover that books can belong to them. That means listening to children. It means respecting their tastes while also expanding their horizons. It means connecting them with the stories they want and introducing them to the stories they may not know they need.

The community must also continue to connect adults with children’s literature. Children’s books are too often treated as lesser art forms or as works valuable only to children themselves. In reality, they are among the most influential, accessible, and emotionally and intellectually rich books we produce.

The legendary Jeopardy! champion James Holzhauer famously credited the children’s nonfiction section of his local library for helping build the broad knowledge base that contributed to his record-breaking success (Springen, 2019). Children’s nonfiction introduces readers to science, history, art, geography, language, and current events in clear and engaging ways. Picture books and middle grade novels often communicate emotional truths with remarkable precision.

Parents, read to your children daily. Let them see you reading. Choose books together. Revisit your childhood favorites and allow your children to share theirs with you. Discuss stories. Ask questions. Laugh together over funny books and linger over difficult or beautiful ones. Reading is not just an academic skill; it is a relationship-building act.

Parents should connect with librarians and teachers, both in schools and public libraries. These professionals know books, know readers, and know how life-changing the right story can be. Strong reading communities are built through collaboration, trust, and shared enthusiasm.

And authors must continue doing what they have always done: writing for the most important members of the reading community, the children. Not for trends, prestige, or adult approval, but for the child turning pages under a blanket with a flashlight way past bedtime, the child searching for themselves in a story, the child trying to understand the world.

Children who read become children who imagine. They become children who question, empathize, create, and dream. They become adults capable of curiosity and compassion. In defending children’s literature, we are not just defending books. We are defending the intellectual and emotional lives of future readers, future citizens, and future leaders.

Believing in Children’s Literature

In the end, Make Believe, a book devoted to the importance of imagination, has sparked a conversation about literary quality and about responsibility, representation, and who gets to decide what stories matter.

Children’s literature is not held together by perfection. It is held together by connection. The shelves of our libraries and classrooms should be wide enough for the literary, the silly, the timeless, and the brand new, and the books that simply help a child fall in love with reading. Because long before children learn to analyze literature, they learn something even more important from books: that their stories, their imaginations, and their lives matter.

References

American Library Association. (2024, March 20). Book ban data. https://www.ala.org/bbooks/book-ban-data

American Library Association. (2023, April 21). Top 10 most challenged books of 2023. https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

Barnett, M. (2026). Make believe: On telling stories to children. Little, Brown and Company.

Cooperative Children’s Book Center. (2023, May 4). Books by and/or about Black, Indigenous and people of color (all years). https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/books-by-about-poc-fnn/

Jones, I. (2024, November 15). We Need Diverse Books marks 10 years and looks to the future. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/96507-we-need-diverse-books-marks-10-years-and-looks-to-the-future.html

Lance, K. C., & Kachel, D. E. (2021, July). Perspectives on school librarian employment in the United States, 2009-10 to 2018-19. SLIDE: The School Librarian Investigation — Decline or Evolution? https://www.slid-eproject.org [verify and replace with correct URL]

Librarianship Studies. (2019, August 12). Five laws of library science. https://www.librarianshipstudies.com/2017/09/five-laws-of-library-science.html

Schaub, M. (2026, May 9). Mac Barnett faces backlash over new book. Kirkus Reviews. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/mac-barnett-faces-backlash-over-new-book/

Springen, K. (2019, April 30). Jeopardy! star James Holzhauer on his children’s book strategy. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/79918-jeopardy-star-james-holzhauer-on-his-children-s-book-strategy.html

 

Meet the authors

Arlene Laverde is a veteran New York City educator with more than 30 years of experience, including 16 years as an elementary school classroom teacher and 19 years as a high school librarian. A former president of both the New York City School Library Association and the New York Library Association, she has long been an advocate for strong school library programs and equitable access to resources. Recently retired, she has returned to where her career began and now works part-time in an elementary school library, coming full circle in her professional journey. Her work continues to center on children’s literature, readers’ advisory, and supporting school librarians.

Jennifer Sturge has been a proponent of libraries since winning a bookmark design contest at the age of 7 with her slogan “One for all, All for free, Libraries!” She is an associate professor in the library media program at The University of West Alabama. She has been teaching children’s and young adult literature to preservice librarians since 2018. Jennifer serves on state wide and national committees serving PSLA, MASL, and AASL in a variety of capacities. She is also on the board of her local public library.