A literature ambassador said most children’s books are ‘crud.’ Now there are calls for him to step down

The literature world is up in arms after a prominent author, who also serves as the national ambassador for young people’s literature, denigrated the quality of the majority of children’s literature. Mac Barnett recently published an essay collection for adults, titled Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children. In his book, he wrote, “So I now offer Barnett’s Addendum to Sturgeon’s Law: Maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud.” The sentence references science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon’s famous 1957 defense of the science fiction genre. Sturgeon wrote that “ninety percent of everything is crud,” and investigated why science fiction among all other literary genres was looked down upon. He believed low quality exists in every genre—no one genre is inherently bad or should be denounced. Barnett is the ninth national ambassador for young people’s literature and an author who has written over 60 children’s books. He was appointed by the nonprofit Every Child a Reader and the Library of Congress (LOC) to raise “national awareness of the importance of young people’s literature as it relates to lifelong literacy, education and the development and betterment of the lives of young people” as explained on the LOC’s website. Children’s lit community takes to social media Authors flocked to social media to share their enragement over Barnett’s words. In one post, a children’s fiction author explained why some members of the children’s literature community were upset, noting that Barnett’s critique of the genre could work to the advantage of bad faith actors seeking to ban books. “He is in a position of power where he could protect and uplift us and instead he says things that cut to the bone and arm book banners? That’s why we’re mad,” the author wrote. “Not because the argument about overly didactic books has no merit. Because what he wrote doesn’t HELP CHILDREN’S LITERATURE.” A letter has c