How to get a giant goat poster, free!

Both the poster and the goat are quite large. Plus more musings on children's books.

SHEEPISH PREAMBLE

Hi everyone! It’s me, Mac Barnett. It’s been a little while. I’ve had three books come out since you heard from me last—The Great Zapfino, John’s Turn, and The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza. Sorry I’m just telling you about them now. In the future, I’ll strive to be more timely. And look, I’m already succeeding:

THE THREE BILLY GOATS POSTER PREORDER

On October 18, my seventh picture book with Jon Klassen comes out. It’s our retelling of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, the first in a series of fairy tale picture books I've been working on. Here is the cover:

Jon and I believe this book contains the biggest goat in the history of children’s literature. And that giant goat is the star of a poster that you can get, for free, when you preorder our book.

In the above image, two regular-sized goats are there for scale, if you want to know how big the big goat is. A pen is also there for scale, if you want to know how big the poster is. (The poster is 16.5” x 24”.) (The pen is 5”.) (The goat is humongous.)

Instructions on how to get your poster are at this site but basically:

1. Preorder a book.
2. Upload your receipt here.
3. The good folks at Scholastic will take care of the rest!

As always, I’d encourage you to purchase from your neighborhood bookshop.

The offer is good only for the USA and Canada, excluding Quebec (we didn’t make the rules!) but shhh here’s a secret: as long as the shipping address entered is in the USA or Canada (excluding Quebec [sorry!]), it’ll work. In the comments of this Instagram post, people have made some very lovely offers to act as proxies for posters. Maybe some beautiful global schemes will develop in the comments of this newsletter too?

The image on the poster, by the way, is my favorite from the book. It’s one of my favorite pictures Jon’s ever made. As soon as he finished it, he texted it to me (sometimes Jon does this when he’s particularly excited about an illustration) and it was so beautiful I started crying. It’s such a tender moment, one that continues one of the main jokes in the book—the oldest goat is really gigantic—but that joke is subordinate to a blissful depiction of fraternal love. NICE WORK, JON!

THE PROCLAMATION TURNS 11

Eleven years ago I wrote a manifesto about picture books. Carson Ellis hand-lettered it. (She has a great Substack, Slowpoke.) Here it is:

I meant to do something last fall to commemorate the ten-year anniversary, but I didn’t figure anything out. Anyway, happy steel anniversary, Proclamation! It forever lives online, in an easily printable format, here). I love talking about this stuff—how picture books are made, sold, and discussed—so if you have any questions or thoughts, leave them in the comments and I’ll try to reply. Here, I’ll put that “Leave a comment button” in again.

SKIP THIS SECTION IF YOU DON’T LIVE IN NEW YORK, OR IF YOU DO LIVE IN NEW YORK BUT WON’T BE THERE THIS WEEKEND. ALTHOUGH, IF YOU DON’T LIVE IN NEW YORK BUT WILL BE THERE THIS WEEKEND, CONSIDER NOT SKIPPING THIS SECTION.

On Saturday, I’ll be at the Brooklyn Book Festival with Shawn Harris talking about The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza.

GOODBYE

All right! That’s all for now! I’ll be doing some live readings on Instagram soon, and there’s a book tour coming in October, but I’ll share that stuff once it firms up. Thanks for reading this.

Mac