"This sentence has set off ecstasies of outrage on Threads, as well as on a few other social media platforms, ecstasies that have reached a pinnacle in calls for Barnett to resign his Library of Congress post."
"Barnett's specialty is picture books, and Make Believe constitutes a full-throated defense of this form. Picture books, he argues, are not only "real books" (people he meets keep asking him when he'll write one of those) but a real art form."
"children's books are less a genre than a collection of forms, from board books to picture books to early-reader chapter books to comics, and onward. Barnett's specialty is picture books, and Make Believe constitutes a full-throated defense of this form."
"It's hard to see how Make Believe would cause offense to any picture book author, so ardent is Barnett's defense of the form against a host of (possibly somewhat imaginary) detractors. Except for one sentence, that is."
Many social-media pile-ons have shifted from X to Threads, where people intensify righteous indignation. Children's book author Mac Barnett published Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children, a strong defense of picture books as real books and a real art form. Barnett argues that children's books are not a single genre but a collection of forms, including board books, picture books, early-reader chapter books, and comics. His picture-book work is well regarded and he was named a national ambassador for young people's literature by the Library of Congress. Outrage began after one sentence in the book, which triggered online backlash and escalated into calls for him to resign his Library of Congress position.
#childrens-literature #picture-books #social-media-outrage #publishing-controversies #library-of-congress
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