Love, Writing, Mac Barnett, and Privilege by Dean Gloster

 

            I loved writing when I was a kid and wanted to be a writer when I grew up. My first effort, when I was six or seven, was an homage (ahem, blatant rip off) of P.D. Eastman’s Go, Dog, Go.

            Apparently, with Go, Turtle Go, I pioneered the reproducing-by-copying-and-uninspired-regurgitation model that later became the basis for A.I. “writing”. Sorry, all. 

Still waiting on my Anthropic settlement money--maybe late 2026

            My quest to become a full-time writer, though, was delayed for decades by two key weaknesses: I like to eat food and live indoors. 

Ramen. Fortunately, it's not what's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner

            So I went to law school and worked as a lawyer for decades, which allowed me to support a family and make and save money.

            Having saved that money, now I get to write stories for young people full time. (And still eat food and live indoors.) I’m incredibly privileged to get to do what I always wanted.

            Privilege. We’ll get back to that. 

            If you’re not tied into the world of writing for young people or have been living under a rock, you may have missed this month’s kerfuffle over writer Mac Barnett dismissing what the rest of us do.

            Barnett was appointed the ambassador of children’s literature by the ALA in 2025, for a two-year position he, in seriously Trumpian fashion, promptly tarnished.

The White House, as I type this: a demolished wing and a UFC arena going up.

            In his new slim book of essays out this month, Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children, Barnett quoted science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon’s remark that even if 90% of science fiction was crud, it was still worthwhile to write excellent science fiction, because 90% of everything is crud. Barnett went on to offer Barnett’s Addendum to Sturgeon’s Law: “Maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud.” (p. 19)

            Ouch. Gosh. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.

Mac Barnett. If it's any consolation, friends, I once terrified him at LAX after a conference

            That 94.7% quote felt like a punch in the stomach, and it took me a couple of days to mostly recover. (Obviously, I’m not fine yet, because three freaking weeks later, I’m blogging about it, when much of the entire rest of children’s literature has already thoughtfully weighed in: Tracy Baptiste, Kate Messner, Christine Soontornvat, Rob Costello, and many other authors have taken issue with Mac Barnett and his Addendum. My favorite terse take was the “trust fall fail” cartoon by illustrator Kaz Windness, where Barnett is a unicorn about to skewer, rather than catch, children's book creators falling backward.)

             Barnett apologized, but I’m even angrier now that I’ve read his slim book: In it, he is very concerned about people being mad at him because of what he says, going out of his way to placate science fiction fans with multiple footnotes (p. 18) making it clear that one book he was making fun of was made up, to avoid having an actual book creator send him death threats in rhyme (53) and noting that his mother will yell at him for sharing that she doesn’t much care for reading fiction (73). I think he knew what he was doing and how it would come across. It’s hard to get a book noticed above the background noise, but Barnett’s combination of visibility from being the ambassador for young people’s literature (prominently noted in the foreword) coupled with his inflammatory “94.7%” quote got his book talked about. A lot.

            It’s appalling, though, that he got that traction by throwing the rest of the creators of young people’s literature under the bus. 

“The wheels on the bus go Splat! Moan Wail…Splat! Moan Wail…”

            In the midst of CrudGate, however, there’s a teaching moment, to talk about privilege and what we do with it. 

            Acknowledging our privilege is something we white men don’t do much. It’s a taboo, it requires research and uncomfortable self-reflection, and people are often defended that they have suffered hardship, worked hard, etc. to get where they are: It wasn’t handed to them. Well.

            In discussing privilege and success, two things can both be true: (1) you can be talented, hard-working, and resourceful, having overcome hardships and obstacles; and (2) you can be privileged and lucky. Success often requires both (1) and (2).

            Talking honestly about privilege is unusual, so before we get back to Mac Barnett, I’ll go first:

            My name is Dean Gloster, and if my dad had been Black, I would not have the comfortable life I enjoy.

            This is my dad, Dean Francis Gloster:

            At 17, during WWII, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy to fight against fascists. (Always oppose fascists.) After the war, he became the first person in his family to ever get a college degree, attending the University of Nevada Reno on the G.I. Bill and scholarships, including a scholarship for boxing (that was a thing back then.) He went to work for a casino, Harrah’s Club, and he and my mother bought a small house with his VA loan in 1960. He got promoted repeatedly at work, until he was the Casino Manager, and he and my mother sold their house and bought a bigger one.

            Almost none of that would have been remotely possible if he were Black.

            The University of Nevada Reno admitted fewer than one black student per year in the 1940s. Under binding lending regulations, until 1973 federally-insured housing loans were unavailable for Black families that wanted to buy in white neighborhoods, and were completely unavailable in black neighborhoods and most integrated neighborhoods, period. 

Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law is a wonderful discussion of legally-required redlining

            It wasn’t until a 1971 consent decree that most Nevada Casinos even employed significant numbers of Black 21 dealers, let alone promoted Black workers to top management. 

            And what about me? Because of my dad’s substantial income and the generational wealth created by my parents’ home ownership (the value appreciated enormously since 1960) my parents were able to send me to college and helped put me through an out-of-state law school, UCLA, where I graduated first in my class. Because of that, I clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Anthony Kennedy (when he was on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals) and Byron White at the Supreme Court. Then I worked for a prestigious San Francisco law firm, Farella Braun & Martel, LLP where I became a partner.

            What would have been different for me if my father was Black? First, I wouldn’t exist: My dad married my white mother in 1954, and I was born in 1958. Interracial marriage wasn’t legalized in Nevada (the first state in the west to do so) until 1959. Because of redlining, I almost certainly couldn’t have gone to what was regarded as the good academic middle school and high school in Reno, which had few black students. I wouldn’t have been able to afford out of state tuition, so if I went to law school it would have been at the less prestigious University of Nevada, with little chance for a federal clerkship and absolutely no chance of clerking at the Supreme Court. Because they didn’t recruit from schools like the University of Nevada, I couldn’t have gotten an interview at the law firm where I became a partner, and I almost certainly wouldn’t have made enough money to retire early and turn to writing when I did.

            My father and I were both hard working, career-focused, disciplined, educated, and smart. But we were successful because we were also white. Privileged.

            And that privilege, unfortunately, was never discussed in my family—nothing about redlining, anti-miscegenation statutes, color barriers in hiring. It was also never taught in any school I went to. After I became a writer, I had to look it up, doing research. 

            Which brings us back to Mac Barnett. As my writer friend Mike J. noted, “Publishing loves young white guys.”

            If you don’t think being male gives you an arbitrary advantage, I give you the experience of Catherine Nichols. As described here, she submitted her query and opening pages, under her name, to 50 literary agents, and got two requests for the full manuscript. Then she submitted that same query and opening pages to 50 different literary agents under a male pseudonym. She got 17 requests for the full manuscript. That math suggests you’re eight-and-a-half times as likely to get a manuscript request if you’re male.

            But Mac Barnett’s privilege isn’t just being a young white guy. When he was starting out writing for young people, he was good friends with Jon Scieszka’s daughter. Jon Scieszka was the first ambassador for young people’s literature and the well-regarded author of lots of wonderful books for young readers including The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and the Time Warp Trio chapter books. Scieszka took Barnett under his wing and opened doors for him.

            To be clear, Mac Barnett is a talented, hard-working author who has written a bunch of absolutely wonderful picture books, including A Ball of Yarn, Guess Again, and Sam & Dave Dig a Hole. 

            I’m especially struck by Sam & Dave Dig a Hole, which is ground-breaking: It’s a surrealistic picture book with incredible re-readability, and it opened my eyes to what can be done with the form. But a huge part of its impact is Jon Klassen’s illustrations. If you or I approached Candlewick with the text for that book, we probably wouldn’t get Jon Klassen assigned as our illustrator. In fact, if you or I approached a publisher with the text for that book—without the track record, reputation, and proven success of Mac Barnett—we’d probably get “I don’t get it” instead of a publishing deal.

            Which perhaps explains Barnett’s unfortunate quote: To use a baseball analogy: if through some special rule you got to start every inning as a runner on third base, you too might be puzzled why the rest of us aren’t hitting more triples.

            Privilege exists. My view is that fact should make us respond by trying to be kinder, more inclusive, and more moral: Try to acknowledge your privilege, refrain from punching down, and if you have the chance, use your privilege to raise others up, not push them under the bus because they haven’t achieved what you have.

            I still love writing. Sending love to you all, fellow creators, and to those who enjoy our stories. Let’s try to do better.

Dean Gloster is a former stand-up comedian and a former law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court. He has an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His debut YA novel DESSERT FIRST is out from Merit Press/Simon Pulse. His YA short stories “Death’s Adopted Daughter” and "Proof of the Existence of Dog" are in the anthologies Spoon Knife 6: Rest Stop and Spoon Knife 7: Transitions from Autonomous Press. He is at work on two more YA novels, and the one he's wrapping up now deals with opposing evil. (Which we should all do.) Starting in August, he will be co-editing the next anthology from Autonomous Press on the subject "Bounce", which you can read about at www.autpress.com. He makes periodic anti-authoritarian posts on Bluesky, where he is @deangloster.bsky.social