Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children
Published 2026 · 112 pages · 30,800 words · about 1 hour at an average pace · Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction
How hard is Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children to read?
Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children scores 21 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 28 out of 100
- Written for a general adult audience by a children's author, the book uses plain, conversational language. Its register sits near On Writing rather than academic criticism.
- Sentence structure: 30 out of 100
- Reviews describe a witty, accessible voice, which points to short, direct sentences. It reads like a spoken lecture and is far from dense scholarly prose.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- The argument about art, imagination and children's lives is anchored in picture books such as Goodnight Moon and Busy, Busy Town. Concrete examples carry the ideas, much as in Atomic Habits.
- Information density: 30 out of 100
- At about 30,800 words and roughly a hundred pages, the book is short and light on apparatus. It moves quickly through its examples without heavy detail.
How Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children is regarded
Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children holds a literary regard score of 27 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.