Major: English
Profession: Children’s book author
What are you doing now?
“I write children’s books—picture books, mostly, but some novels for kids, too.”
Barnett is the author of the Brixton Brother mystery novels, and many picture books, including “Extra Yarn,” which won the 2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the 2013 E.B. White Read Aloud Award, and was a Caldecott Medal Honor Book.
How did you get there?
Barnett decided he wanted to write for kids when he was a student at Pomona College.
“Over the summers, I worked at a summer camp, and I read a picture book called The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka, to my kids. When I came back to Pomona, I had an idea for a story of my own. I would tell everyone I was inspired by The Stinky Cheese Man, and a good friend from Pitzer said, ‘You know my dad wrote that book, right?’ So I sent my first manuscript to Jon, he sent it to his agent, and that’s how I got my start.”
How did Pomona prepare you?
“I guess I’m a Liberal Arts True Believer. I learned to think at Pomona. Art for kids is no different from art for adults—it’s good when it tells the truth, beautifully. And I started to sort out what I think truth is, and what I think beauty is, in college.”
Where do you see yourself in five years?
“I hope I’m doing what I am now. This job doesn’t come with security, or even the illusion of security, and every writer I know is at least a little afraid that they’ll run out of ideas, or the public will turn their back on them, or they’ll forget how to do the job well. But I wouldn’t want any other work.”
Any advice for prospective or current students?
Barnett says difficult poetry and sculpture were the most useful things he studied at Pomona.
“My first marketable job skill, as an editorial intern at [the] publishing company called McSweeney’s, was my grounding in medieval Icelandic literature. Now: I don’t think the study of art or literature needs to justify itself on utilitarian grounds. But I do want to assure you that there are jobs for English majors, for philosophers, for artists.”