Make Believe Quotes

“If you don’t think children’s books are real books, on some level you don’t think children are real people.”
― Mac Barnett, Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children

“Kids are human beings right now, with rich interior lives. They deserve entertaining stories and meaningful art.”
― Mac Barnett, Make Believe

“When children cannot find their experience and emotions – even (and especially) their fears, jealousy, sadness, and anger – reflected in the stories they read, two things can happen, both bad.
Kids may abandon reading and seek out art and media that better reflects their lives. Or, instead of deciding that there must be something wrong with books, children may decide that there must be something wrong with themselves, and become ashamed of the very human feeling, which adults have excluded from their literature.”
― Mac Barnett, Make Believe

“Every story is a secret door, an invitation to imagine another world and, by believing so, make it real.”
― Mac Barnett, Make Believe

“When we read, we make believe. We aren't duped or ensorcelled. Deep down we decide. We make ourselves believe. We know the characters in stories aren't real, but our feelings for them are. We know the things in the stories never happened, but we can't wait to learn what happens next.”
― Mac Barnett, Make Believe

“A lot of children's books published are propaganda for adulthood. They're prosocial messages masquerading as stories, designed to promote good behavior, glorifying grown-ups, and get kids to sleep on time. These books get praised for their educational value or positive moral messages, but they fail to provide any kind of real literacy experience for children. Instead their value is to the adults who buy them and who find themselves flattered, and their rules reinforced, in the books' pages.”
― Mac Barnett, Make Believe

“The writer says, “I am going to tell you a lie.”
And the reader says, “Okay, I will believe it.” Samuel Coleridge, the English Romantic poet and
critic, called this contract “that willing suspension of disbelief.” Kids just call it make-believe.”
― Mac Barnett, Make Believe

“When children read, they're aided not just by their flexible mind, but also by the power of their imagination. They're capable of a wholehearted spiritual commitment to fiction that most adults find difficult to muster.”
― Mac Barnett, Make Believe

“When my son was about to turn two, strangers would offer condolences. There’s a collective cultural dread of toddlers, who get described more like animals than people. Kids in their "terrible twos," I was warned, are illogical, unregulated, and feral. "Good luck," people would say. "He'll grow out of it."

I'm lucky: My son is a very easygoing kid. But I remember the first tantrum he threw for me. He was standing by our front door and asked to go outside. So I opened the door and grabbed his shoes. But as soon as he stepped onto the porch, he pointed back into the house.

"Inside," he said.

"Okay," I said. I picked him up and brought him inside.

But as soon as I shut the front door, he pointed outside.

"Outside!" he said.

You know where this is going. We went back and forth, inside and outside, again and again. He got more frustrated. And I got more frustrated. Eventually he wound up straddling the threshold of our house, sobbing. When I tried to comfort him, he screamed at me. "You go wherever you want!" I said. He just got madder. I felt trapped, convinced he’d concocted the whole episode as a pretext to unleash his rage at me. It was ridiculous. I consoled myself with the thought that he was just being a toddler.

But later I kept thinking about him wailing at our front door, one foot inside, one foot outside. His misery wasn't unreasonable, or trivial, or silly. My son was experiencing the agony of wanting two things that were impossible to have at the same time. What a fundamentally human sorrow! My son wasn't being a toddler; he was being a person. Adults may not walk around howling, but that same pain rages within us. In that moment, as a father, I was powerless to solve my son's problem. I told him he could go wherever he wanted, but of course I was wrong. To be where he wanted was impossible.”
― Mac Barnett, Make Believe