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Hi everybody. So my name is Mac.

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My job is that I lie to children,

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but they're honest lies.

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I write children's books,

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and there's a quote from Pablo Picasso,

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"We all know that Art is not truth.

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Art is a lie that makes us realize truth

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or at least the truth given to us to understand.

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The artist must know the manner whereby

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to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies."

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I first heard this when I was a kid,

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and I loved it,

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but I had no idea what it meant.

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(Laughter)

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So I thought, you know what, it's what I'm here

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to talk to you today about, though,

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truth and lies, fiction and reality.

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So I could I untangle

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this knotted bunch of sentences?

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And I said, I've got a PowerPoint.

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Let's do a Venn diagram.

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(Laughter)

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So there it is, right there, boom.

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We've got truth and lies

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and then there's this little space

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at the edge, in the middle,

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that liminal space, that's art, so I think we, yeah.

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All right. Venn diagram. (Laughter) (Applause)

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But that's actually not very helpful either.

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The thing that made me understand

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that quote and really kind of what art,

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at least the art of fiction, was,

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was working with kids.

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I used to be a summer camp counselor.

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I would do it on my summers off from college,

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and I loved it.

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It was a sports summer camp

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for four to six-year olds.

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I was in charge of the four-year olds,

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which is good, because

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four-year olds can't play sports, and neither can I.

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(Laughter)

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I play sports at, like, a four-year old level,

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so what would happen is is the kids would, like,

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dribble around some cones, and then got hot,

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and then they would go sit underneath a tree

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where I was already sitting,

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and I would just make up stories and tell them to them

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and I would tell them stories about my life.

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I would tell them about how, on the weekends,

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I would go home and I would
spy for the Queen of England.

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And soon, other kids

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who weren't even in my group of kids, you know,

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they would come up to me, and they would say,

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"You're Mac Barnett, right?

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You're the guy who spies for the Queen of England."

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And I had been waiting my whole life for strangers

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to come up and ask me that question.

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In my fantasy, they were svelte Russian women,

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but, you know, four-year olds,

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you take what you can get in Berkeley, California.

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And I realized that the stories that I was telling

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were real in this way that was familiar to me

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and really exciting.

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I think the pinnacle of this
for me, I'll never forget this,

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there was little girl named Riley. She was tiny,

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and she used to always take out her lunch every day

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and she would throw out her fruit.

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She would just take her fruit,

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her mom packed her a melon every day,

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and she would just throw it in the ivy

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and then she would eat, like, fruit snacks

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and pudding cups, and I was like, "Riley,

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you can't do that, you have to eat the fruit."

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And she was like, "Why?"

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And I was like, "Well, when
you throw the fruit in the ivy,

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pretty soon, it's going to be overgrown with melons,"

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which is why I think I ended up

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telling stories to children and not
being a nutritionist for children.

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And so Riley was like, "That will never happen.

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That's not going to happen."

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And so, on the last day of camp,

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I got up early and I got a big canteloupe

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from the grocery store

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and I hid it in the ivy,

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and then at lunchtime, I was like,

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"Riley, why don't you go over
there and see what you've done."

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And — (Laughter) —

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she went trudging through the ivy, and then her eyes

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just got so wide, and she pointed out this melon

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that was bigger than her head,

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and all the kids ran over there and rushed around her,

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and one of the kids was like, "Hey,

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why is there a sticker on this?"

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(Laughter)

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And I was like, "That is also why I say

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do not throw your stickers in the ivy.

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Put them in the trash can. It
ruins nature when you do this."

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And Riley carried that melon around with her all day,

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and she was so proud.

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And, you know, Riley knew

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she didn't grow a melon in seven days,

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but she also knew that she did,

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and it's a weird place,

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but it's not just a place that kids can get to.

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It's anything. Art can get us to that place.

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She was right in that place in the middle,

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that place which you could call art or fiction.

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I'm going to call it wonder.

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It's what Coleridge called the
willing suspension of disbelief

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or poetic faith,

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for those moments where a
story, no matter how strange,

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has some semblance of the truth,

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and then you're able to believe it.

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It's not just kids who can get there.

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Adults can too, and we get there when we read.

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It's why, you know, in two days, people will be

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descending on Dublin to take the walking tour

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of Bloomsday and see everything
that happened in "Ulysses,"

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even though none of that happened.

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Or people go to London and they visit Baker Street

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to see Sherlock Holmes's apartment,

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even though 221B is just a number that was painted

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on a building that never actually had that address.

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We know these characters aren't real,

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but we have real feelings about them,

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and we're able to do that.

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We know these characters aren't real,

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and yet we also know that they are.

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Kids can get there a lot more easily than adults can,

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and that's why I love writing for kids.

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I think kids are the best audience

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for serious literary fiction.

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When I was a kid,

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I was obsessed with secret door novels,

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you know, things like "Narnia"

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where you would open a wardrobe
and go through to a magical land.

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And I was convinced that secret doors really did exist

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and I would look for them and try to go through them.

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I wanted to live and cross over into that fictional world

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which is, you know, I would always, like,

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just open people's closet doors. (Laughter)

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I would just go through my mom's boyfriend's closet,

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and there was not a secret magical land there.

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There was some other weird stuff that
I think my mom should know about.

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(Laughter)

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And I was happy to tell her all about it.

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After college, my first job was working

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behind one of these secret doors.

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This is a place called 826 Valencia.

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It's at 826 Valencia Street

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in the Mission in San Francisco,

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and when I worked there, there
was a publishing company

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headquartered there called McSweeney's,

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a non-profit writing center called 826 Valencia,

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but then the front of it

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was a strange shop.

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You see, this place was zoned retail,

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and in San Francisco, they were
not going to give us a variance,

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and so the writer who founded
it, a writer named Dave Eggers,

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to come into compliance with code, he said, "Fine,

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I'm just going to build a pirate supply store."

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And that's what he did. (Laughter)

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And it's beautiful. It's all wood.

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There's drawers you can pull out and get citrus

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so you don't get scurvy.

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They have eyepatches in lots of colors,

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because when it's springtime, pirates want to go wild.

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You don't know. Black is boring. Pastel.

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Or eyes, also in lots of colors,

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just glass eyes, depending on how you want

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to deal with that situation.

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And the store, strangely,

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people came to them and bought things,

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and they ended up paying the rent

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for our tutoring center, which was behind it,

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but to me, more important was the fact

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that I think the quality of work you do,

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kids would come and get instruction in writing,

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and when you have to walk this weird, liminal,
fictional space like this to go do your writing,

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it's going to affect the kind of work that you make.

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It's a secret door that you can walk through.

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So I ran the 826 in Los Angeles,

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and it was my job to build the store down there.

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So we have the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

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That's our motto: whenever
you are, we're already then.

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(Laughter)

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And it's on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

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Our friendly staff is ready to help you.

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They're from all eras,

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including just the 1980s, that guy on the end,

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he's from the very recent past.

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There's our Employees of the Month,

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including Genghis Khan, Charles Dickens.

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Some great people have come up through our ranks.

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This is our kind of pharmacy section.

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We have some patent medicines,

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Canopic jars for your organs,

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Communist soap that says

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"This is your soap for the year."

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Our slushy machine broke

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on the opening night and we didn't know what to do.

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Our architect was covered in red syrup.

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It looked like he had just murdered somebody,

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which it was not out of the question

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for this particular architect,

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and we didn't know what to do.

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It was, like, going to be the highlight of our store.

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So we just put that sign on it that said,

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"Out of order: come back yesterday."

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And that ended up being a better joke than slushies,

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so we just left it there forever.

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Mammoth Chunks. These things
weigh, like, seven pounds each.

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Barbarian repellent: it's full of salad

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and potpourri things that barbarians hate.

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Dead languages.

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(Laughter)

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Leeches: nature's tiny doctors.

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And Viking Odorant, which
comes in lots of great scents:

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toenails, sweat and rotten vegetables, pyre ash.

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Because we believe that Axe Body Spray

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is something that you should
only find on the battlefield,

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not under your arms.

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And these are robot emotion chips,

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so robots can feel love or fear.

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Our biggest seller is Schadenfreude,

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which we did not expect.

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(Laughter)

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We did not think that was going to happen.

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But there's a non-profit behind it,

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and kids go through a door
that says "Employees Only"

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and they end up in this space

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where they do homework and write stories

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and make films and this is a book release party

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where kids will read.

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There's a quarterly that's published

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with just writing that's done by the kids

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who come every day after school,

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and we have release parties

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and they eat cake and read for their parents

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and drink milk out of champagne glasses.

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And it's a very special space,

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because it's this weird space in the front.

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The joke isn't a joke.

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You can't find the seams on the fiction,

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and I love that. It's this little bit of fiction

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that's colonized the real world.

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I see it as kind of a book in three dimensions.

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There's a term called metafiction,

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and that's just stories about stories,

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and meta's having a moment now.

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Its last big moment was probably in the 1960s

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with novelists like John Barth and William Gaddis,

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but it's been around.

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It's almost as old as storytelling itself.

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And one metafictive technique

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is breaking the fourth wall. Right?

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It's when an actor will turn to the audience

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and say, "I am an actor,

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these are just rafters."

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And even that supposedly honest moment,

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I would argue, is in service of the lie,

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but it's supposed to foreground the artificiality

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of the fiction.

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For me, I kind of prefer the opposite.

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If I'm going to break down the fourth wall,

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I want fiction to escape

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and come into the real world.

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I want a book to be a secret door that opens

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and lets the stories out into reality.

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And so I try to do this in my books.

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And here's just one example.

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This is the first book I ever made.

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It's called "Billy Twitters
and his Blue Whale Problem."

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And it's about a kid who gets a blue whale as a pet

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but it's a punishment

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and it ruins his life.

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So it's delivered overnight by FedUp.

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(Laughter)

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And he has to take it to school with him.

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He lives in San Francisco: very tough city

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to own a blue whale in.

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A lot of hills, real estate is at a premium.

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This market's crazy, everybody.

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But underneath the jacket is this case,

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and that's the cover underneath the book, the jacket,

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and there's an ad

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that offers a free, 30-day risk-free trial

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for a blue whale.

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And you can just send in a
self-addressed stamped envelope

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and we'll send you a whale.

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And kids do write in.

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So here's a letter. It says, "Dear people,

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I bet you 10 bucks you won't send me a blue whale.

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00:12:43,199 --> 00:12:45,676
Eliot Gannon (age 6)."

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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So what Eliot and the other kids

298
00:12:53,099 --> 00:12:55,451
who send these in get back

299
00:12:55,451 --> 00:12:58,376
is a letter in very small print
from a Norwegian law firm

300
00:12:58,376 --> 00:13:02,527
— (Laughter) —

301
00:13:02,527 --> 00:13:05,698
that says that due to a change in customs laws,

302
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their whale has been held up in Sognefjord,

303
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which is a very lovely fjord,

304
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and then it just kind of talks about Sognefjord

305
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and Norwegian food for a while. It digresses.

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(Laughter)

307
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But it finishes off by saying that, you know,

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your whale would love to hear from you.

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He's got a phone number,

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and you can call and leave him a message.

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And when you call and leave him a message,

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you just, on the outgoing message,

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it's just whale sounds and then a beep,

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which actually sounds a lot like a whale sound.

315
00:13:40,954 --> 00:13:42,934
And they get a picture of their whale too.

316
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So this is Randolph,

317
00:13:45,465 --> 00:13:48,806
and Randolph belongs to a kid named Nico

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who was one of the first kids to ever call in,

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and I'll play you some of Nico's message.

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00:13:55,398 --> 00:13:59,830
This is the first message I ever got from Nico.

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00:13:59,830 --> 00:14:01,769
(Audio) Nico: Hello, this is Nico.

322
00:14:01,769 --> 00:14:05,803
I am your owner, Randolph. Hello.

323
00:14:05,803 --> 00:14:09,279
So this is the first time I can ever talk to you,

324
00:14:09,279 --> 00:14:15,523
and I might talk to you soon another day. Bye."

325
00:14:15,523 --> 00:14:18,110
Mac Barnett: So Nico called back, like, an hour later.

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00:14:18,110 --> 00:14:20,360
(Laughter)

327
00:14:20,360 --> 00:14:23,937
And here's another one of Nico's messages.

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(Audio) Nico: Hello, Randolph, this is Nico.

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00:14:27,840 --> 00:14:32,993
I haven't talked to you for a long time,

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00:14:32,993 --> 00:14:37,688
but I talked to you on Saturday or Sunday,

331
00:14:37,688 --> 00:14:39,938
yeah, Saturday or Sunday,

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00:14:39,938 --> 00:14:42,953
so now I'm calling you again

333
00:14:42,953 --> 00:14:47,869
to say hello and I wonder what you're doing right now,

334
00:14:47,869 --> 00:14:50,805
and I'm going to probably call you again

335
00:14:50,805 --> 00:14:52,988
tomorrow or today,

336
00:14:52,988 --> 00:14:57,184
so I'll talk to you later. Bye."

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00:14:57,184 --> 00:15:01,492
MB: So he did, he called back that day again.

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00:15:01,492 --> 00:15:05,373
He's left over 25 messages for Randolph

339
00:15:05,373 --> 00:15:08,545
over four years.

340
00:15:08,545 --> 00:15:10,216
You find out all about him

341
00:15:10,216 --> 00:15:11,852
and, like, the grandma that he loves

342
00:15:11,852 --> 00:15:13,967
and the grandma that he likes a little bit less

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— (Laughter) —

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00:15:16,004 --> 00:15:18,827
and the crossword puzzles that he does,

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and this is, I'll play you one more message from Nico.

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This is the Christmas message from Nico.

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00:15:26,690 --> 00:15:28,593
(Audio) Nico: Hello Randolph,

348
00:15:28,593 --> 00:15:31,528
sorry I haven't talked to you in a long time.

349
00:15:31,528 --> 00:15:34,194
It's just that I've been so busy

350
00:15:34,194 --> 00:15:36,893
because school started,

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00:15:36,893 --> 00:15:39,926
as you might not know, probably

352
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since you're a whale you don't know,

353
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and I'm calling you to just say,

354
00:15:48,487 --> 00:15:52,177
to wish you a merry Christmas.

355
00:15:52,177 --> 00:15:56,778
So have a nice Christmas,

356
00:15:56,778 --> 00:16:03,651
and bye bye, Randolph. Goodbye."

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00:16:03,651 --> 00:16:05,815
MB: I actually got Nico,

358
00:16:05,815 --> 00:16:08,306
I hadn't heard from in 18 months,

359
00:16:08,306 --> 00:16:12,424
and he just left a message two days ago.

360
00:16:12,424 --> 00:16:15,057
His voice is completely different,

361
00:16:15,057 --> 00:16:18,082
but he put his babysitter on the phone,

362
00:16:18,082 --> 00:16:22,211
and she was very nice to Randolph as well.

363
00:16:22,211 --> 00:16:26,561
But Nico's the best reader I could hope for.

364
00:16:26,561 --> 00:16:30,597
I would want anyone I was writing for

365
00:16:30,597 --> 00:16:32,428
to be in that place emotionally

366
00:16:32,428 --> 00:16:34,664
with the things that I create.

367
00:16:34,664 --> 00:16:38,365
I feel lucky. Kids like Nico are the best readers,

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00:16:38,365 --> 00:16:42,066
and they deserve the best stories we can give them.

369
00:16:42,066 --> 00:16:44,162
Thank you very much.

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00:16:44,162 --> 00:16:46,817
(Applause)