Publishers Weekly
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“Kids’ books merit grown-up conversation,” asserts children’s author Barnett (Rumpelstiltskin) in his by turns grave and playful treatise. Lamenting that there’s “almost no serious critical attention” paid to this “widely read, deeply loved, highly profitable literature,” Barnett urges adult readers to reflect on how “we control the production, reception, and consumption of the books kids read.” He goes on to deliver a stream of insights (“Children’s publishing operates without any meaningful participation from children”) mixed with tongue-in-cheek observations (“Children are terrible customers. They have no real income.... Many of my readers cannot, technically, read”). Barnett’s observations include that the book-buying habits of adults, rooted in their own nostalgia, have kept decades-old children’s titles in print; that the more “didactic” branch of American children’s publishing has “beget a hulking kindness industrial complex”; and that the “poetic achievement” of Goodnight Moon exemplifies what he believes to be the highest goal of children’s literature—to provide striking observations of the small, daily “hard things children must do alone,” such as going to sleep. (“To have your worries validated... is such a rare gift when you’re a kid,” he notes.) It’s a poignant refresher for “dead dull finished grown-ups” on childhood’s role as an “in-between place full of uncertainty.” (May)

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Award-winning children's book author Barnett, the ninth U.S. National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, hates being asked if he plans to write a "real book," aka a book for adults. "No, I do not ever plan on writing a book for adults." Then: "Anyway, this is a book for adults." Initiated by Barnett's Italian publisher, this is a slim yet soaring essay collection about the best and worst of books for kids. In literature as in life, children may be dismissed, talked down to, or perpetually on the receiving end of some lesson, but Barnett points out that the youngest among us may actually be "more willing to engage deeply with . . . books we might call art fiction or literary fiction." He pays tribute to writers like Goodnight Moon author Margaret Wise Brown, "a major poet who discovered . . . in children the ideal audience for the ambitious and often deeply strange stories she wanted to tell." 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.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Celebrating the “boundless genius of children.” Children’s book author Barnett, the ninth national ambassador for Young People’s Literature, here argues for the place of children’s literature in human social development. He makes a case for fantasy and the imagination as the sites of growth. But 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. Much of the book moves through association: “Just as the pediatrician cares for our children’s bodies, the kids’ book author attends to our children’s souls.” He compares one strain of children’s literature to propaganda—didactic lessons laid down from above. Such books have value, not for the child reader but for “the adults who buy them and who find themselves flattered, and their rules reinforced, in the books’ pages.” And so, there are bad books for good children, and good books for bad children. Barnett writes, “Since the invention of the printing press, children’s books have been a battleground between those who want to tell kids what to do and those who want to tell them stories.” Barnett is clearly in the storytelling camp, and the highlight of his book is an affectionate reading of Margaret Wise Brown’s classic,Goodnight Moon. He calls the book “right and true, a bedtime book that actually feels like bedtime,” and 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. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.