When dealing with statistics, it’s always best to exercise caution. This goes not only for the readers encountering them online or in textbooks but also for the writers using them as rhetorical tools. Because just as with power tools – or TNT, say – careless handling tends to result in unpleasant outcomes.

One vivid example has been on display in the world of children’s fiction this week, where author Mac Barnett, by his own admission, really stepped in it with his recent turn moonlighting as an essayist. In Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children, a slim treatise published for grown-ups earlier this month, Barnett referenced the so-called Sturgeon’s Law that famously claims 90 percent of science-fiction is crud because 90 percent of everything is crud.

Elaborating on the idea, the vocal picture book advocate and national ambassador for young people’s literature had an even gloomier assessment of his chosen field: “I have a nagging fear that children’s literature suffers from a slightly higher crud percentage than literature as a whole…maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud.”

As you can imagine, this went over like a lead balloon. Though the book, really, is a defense of children’s literature and all that it can be, this one line drew ire. Once the comments began circulating online, it elicited a torrent of rebuttals from kids’ lit creators, many of whom heard undertones of gatekeeping in this glib jab at their shared industry. Some even went so far as to suggest it would become a talking point in book-banning arguments – already at unprecedented levels, according to the American Library Association.

“Who decides which books are ‘crud’? Who decides that the vast majority of the books published are not fit for our young readers?” asked an open letter signed by some 300 authors and illustrators, including a number of Caldecott and Newbery honorees, who said these kinds of criticisms have historically been “used as a cudgel and dog whistle to decry the necessary diversification of children’s literature.”

“I wish I hadn’t written it that way,” Barnett admitted on NPR’s Weekend Edition, expressing contrition for a statement he called “overzealous,” “careless” and “hyperbolic.” Given the chance to clarify, the author took another swing at making his point, saying: “It's not about making less books – not for me. It's about making more books: more books, more kinds of books, more voices in the room. That’s when literature is humming to me,” he said, adding: “I tell kids, like, look at these books – these are books by so many different people who led different lives in different times, different places, and they all care about different things. And if they write a story and we pick that up, we might just find ourselves interested in the things that they're interested in.”

At the very least, this seems like a good place to start a conversation: What do you think of the recent imbroglio? Is it just a tempest in a teapot, or symptomatic of something bigger in the world of children’s books that begs addressing – and if so, what? Let us know at bookoftheday@npr.org.