In this excerpt, Mac Barnett recalls how dull “early reader” books inspired him to write books for kids.
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Inside Voice: What Can Our Thoughts Reveal About the Nature of Consciousness?
“Scientists and philosophers studying the mind have discovered how little we know about our inner experiences.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Prehistory of A.I. Slop
“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring R. O. Kwon
The author of The Incendiaries and Exhibit on the bed as refuge, the power of movement and exercise, a life of writing, and more.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Made in the USA
“Pete Hegseth is the product of an essentially American ethos—which means we have no choice but to ask what to do with him, and what to do with ourselves.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Rebecca Solnit Says the Left’s Next Hero Is Already Here
“I remain hopeful partly as defiance.”
Posted inNewsletter
Ian MacKaye’s Worn-Out Sneakers
Work-ethic wisdom from Fugazi and Ibram X. Kendi.
Posted inEditor's Pick
They Would Not Dream of Flowers: Translating Through the Tehran Blackout
“There, in that forced isolation, I sat translating a story about death. Meanwhile, the real thing operated just outside my window.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What I Saw at the Movies
“I wasn’t a film critic or festival programmer or even an aspiring director. I was just an adolescent schoolboy and, in my parents’ probably loving description, a ‘weirdo.’”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Year I Was Supposed to Die
“At 42, with young kids, I got a devastating diagnosis. I knew I was in for a harrowing journey. I didn’t know quite what kind.”
