Elisabeth Egan , The New York Times; How a Throwaway Line Turned Writers Against a Cheerleader for Children’s Books
"Barnett was thrilled when he got word in the summer of 2024 that Carla Hayden, then the librarian of Congress, had named him national ambassador for young people’s literature...
He is the ninth author in the role. The program is a partnership between the Library of Congress and the literary nonprofit Every Child a Reader; previous honorees include Jon Scieszka, Jacqueline Woodson, Jason Reynolds and Meg Medina...
“Make Believe” sparked a firestorm with a single line.
On Page 22 of the 102-page book, Barnett explains Sturgeon’s Law, in which the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon stated that “90 percent of everything is crud.”
Building on this idea, Barnett writes: “I have a nagging fear that children’s literature suffers from a slightly higher crud percentage than literature as a whole. So I now offer Barnett’s Addendum to Sturgeon’s Law: Maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud.”
Fellow children’s authors were aghast: How could their national ambassador say such a thing?...
Later I texted one final question: “Do you think you were wrong to say 94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud?”
Barnett responded, simply, “Yes, I should have used a different argument.”"
