Mac Barnett presents “La porta segreta”

Mac Barnett is one of the most beloved authors of children’s books. We asked him some questions about “La porta segreta” (published with Terre di mezzo Editore), his first book for adults that talks about children’s literature and why children’s books are a very serious thing. Enjoy the reading!

How did your first book for adults “La porta segreta” come about and what does the publication of this book mean to you?

A few years ago, on a visit to Terre di Mezzo’s offices, my editor, Davide Musso, told me he thought I should publish a book about kids’ books for adults. The truth was I’d been wanting to write something like that for years. Adults are deeply intertwined with children’s books. Adults write children’s books, edit children’s books, sell children books, and buy children’s books. And adults often have deep emotional connections to the books they read to kids. But there’s very little serious writing about children’s books for a “general reader”, by which I mean a book-loving grown-up who is not an expert in children’s literature. If we want our children to have good books to read, it’s incumbent on us adults to think deeply about how kids’ books work. It’s especially meaningful to be publishing this book with Terre di Mezzo first, in Italian, which is a bit unusual for an American author, but for me feels perfectly right, since my editors, Giulia Rizzo and the aforementioned Davide, are two people I’ve been discussing kids’ books with for more than a decade.

In your opinion, what are the essential characteristics of a “good children’s book”?

There should be as many kinds of children’s books as there are books for adults— kids deserve variety in subject matter, point of view, genre, and even quality. I think the best children’s stories—like the best stories generally— tell the truth about what it means to be a person. But since children’s truths are different from adults’, the children’s writer must possess some special sensitivity to the lives of kids.

In the book you write that “The great children’s writers I’ve met have all had either a direct line to their own childhood or a deep sympathy with actual kids.” In your experience as a writer, which of these two characteristics prevail?

Well, both. But I’m not tooting my own horn here! I don’t think it’s preferable to have one or the other—I have one good friend who very much writes for the kid he once was, and another who doesn’t really remember her childhood but is brilliantly present and alive when she’s talking to actual kids. They both make great books, and I actually think their work shares the same spirit. But they arrive at that place via two different paths.

Who are the illustrators and authors of children’s books who have inspired you most?

Oh wow. Kids’ book people: Maurice Sendak, Tomi Ungerer, Margaret Wise Brown, Donald Crews, James Marshall, Arnold Lobel, E.L. Konigsburg, Louise Fitzhugh, Ellen Raskin. Italo Calvino was of particular inspiration to me when I was writing this book, and is maybe the author I most love reading (and I’m not just saying that because he’s Italian).