Mac Barnett · Carson Ellis
A 4,000-year-old tale, spun into gold by two modern masters
On February 3, 2026, Orchard Books published something rare: a fairy tale retelling that feels both ancient and brand new. Rumpelstiltskin, the second collaboration between National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Mac Barnett and Caldecott Honoree Carson Ellis, takes the Brothers Grimm classic and fills it with life—modern voice meeting medieval splendor in what Booklist calls "a pleasing alchemy."
This isn't a radical reimagining. It's something quieter and perhaps more difficult: a faithful retelling that makes you fall in love with the original all over again. Barnett's signature wit—the kind that earned him Caldecott Honors for Extra Yarn and Sam & Dave Dig a Hole—gives the miller's daughter a voice that's conversational, funny, and deeply human. ("The miller was a nice enough guy, but he had a big mouth.") Meanwhile, Ellis's lush gouache illustrations evoke wood-block prints and Renaissance portraiture, grounding the fantastic in a richly detailed medieval world where every landscape breathes and every portrait traces a soul's transformation.
At its heart, this is still the haunting tale of straw spun into gold, of impossible bargains struck in tower rooms at midnight, of a name whispered around a fire that changes everything. But in Barnett and Ellis's hands, it's also a story about a frog-catching child who becomes a reluctant queen, about the weight of other people's lies, and about the ancient magic of knowing—truly knowing—someone's name.
Mac Barnett doesn't just write picture books. He thinks deeply about them, advocates for them, and occasionally revolutionizes them. Born in Castro Valley, California, in 1982, Barnett studied under David Foster Wallace at Pomona College before launching a career that has produced over 70 books and counting. His trophy shelf includes multiple Caldecott Honors (Extra Yarn, Sam & Dave Dig a Hole), E.B. White Read Aloud Awards, and a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. His Shapes Trilogy with Jon Klassen became the Emmy-winning Apple TV+ series Shape Island.
In 2011, Barnett wrote the Picture Book Proclamation, an art manifesto signed by 21 fellow children's authors, declaring the picture book "a vital art form." He wasn't kidding around. His 2024 book for adults, La Porta Segreta, explores the theoretical depths of children's literature with the same seriousness academics bring to poetry or film.
But what makes Barnett's work sing is his voice: conversational, wickedly funny, and never condescending. He speaks directly to young readers with the kind of punchy, playful language that makes stories feel like secrets shared between friends. As the current National Ambassador for Young People's Literature (2025-26), he's not just writing the future of children's books—he's defining it.
Carson Ellis paints worlds. Born in Vancouver in 1975 and trained as a fine artist at the University of Montana, Ellis brings the eye of a gallery painter to the picture book page. Her gouache illustrations—influenced by Egon Schiele, German Expressionism, and folk art—have a weight and intentionality that's rare in commercial illustration. She doesn't just decorate stories. She builds them, layer by luminous layer.
Ellis won a Caldecott Honor for Du Iz Tak?, a book written entirely in invented bug language, and an E.B. White Read Aloud Award for the same. Her author-illustrator work (Home, In the Half Room) explores architecture, belonging, and the poetry of everyday spaces. As an illustrator, she's brought magic to everything from The Mysterious Benedict Society to Susan Cooper's The Shortest Day, always with that signature blend of medieval elegance and naturalist detail.
Beyond books, Ellis has designed album covers and stage sets for The Decemberists (her husband Colin Meloy is the band's frontman), earned two Grammy nominations for package design, and created art for board games, wallpaper, and editorial spreads in The New Yorker. She lives on a farm outside Portland, Oregon, where the lush landscapes and attention to flora and fauna that define her work are clearly more than aesthetic choices—they're a way of life.
Together, Barnett and Ellis previously collaborated on What Is Love? (2021), but Rumpelstiltskin marks their first fairy tale partnership—a pairing that feels destined, as if the universe finally noticed what magic these two could make together.
The story we know as "Rumpelstiltskin" first appeared in the Brothers Grimm's 1812 Children's and Household Tales, though researchers trace its roots back roughly 4,000 years. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected it from German oral tradition, later revising it for their 1857 edition with a more violent ending—the furious imp literally tears himself in two.
But the tale is far older and wider than the Grimm brothers. Folklorists call it ATU 500: "The Name of the Supernatural Helper." Versions appear across Europe and beyond: Tom Tit Tot in England, Whuppity Stoorie in Scotland, Ricdin-Ricdon in France, Pancimanci in Hungary, even Daiku to Oniroku in Japan. The details shift—sometimes it's a dwarf, sometimes a devil, sometimes a spinning wheel becomes a different task—but the core remains constant: a mortal in desperate straits makes a bargain with a supernatural creature, and the only escape is to discover the creature's true name.
This isn't just a plot device. It's ancient magic. Across cultures and millennia, knowing someone's true name has meant holding power over them. In Genesis, Adam names the animals and gains dominion. In Egyptian mythology, Isis tricks Ra into revealing his secret name to gain his power. The concept is so fundamental to psychology, teaching, and human connection that scholars now call it the Rumpelstiltskin Principle: the power of personal names and titles to create relationship and authority.
At its heart, Rumpelstiltskin is a story about impossible demands and impossible escapes, about daughters forced to pay for their fathers' lies, about the price of gold and the greater price of freedom. And it's about the small, fierce victory of knowing someone so completely that their power over you simply... disappears.
"Pleasing alchemy" is how Booklist described it, and that's exactly right. Barnett and Ellis don't reinvent the wheel—they spin it into gold.
Barnett's text is "short, punchy," juicing "the tale's momentum" (Publishers Weekly) with conversational asides and understated humor. The miller "had a big mouth." The king's demands are absurd, and Barnett doesn't pretend otherwise. This is a story that respects young readers enough to let them in on the joke while preserving the tale's darker undertones: coercion, impossible bargains, the theft of a child. It's "infused with 21st-century smarts" (Kirkus) without sacrificing fairy-tale atmosphere.
Ellis's gouache paintings are nothing short of stunning. Medieval in spirit, they evoke wood-block prints and Renaissance portraiture, giving the story a historical weight that anchors Barnett's modern voice. Her landscapes are "decidedly lush" (Booklist), and her character portraits trace the miller's daughter's transformation "from frog-catching child to regal royal and back again" (Publishers Weekly)—a visual narrative as powerful as the text itself.
This is Barnett's second book in Scholastic's fairy-tale series, following his 2023 Odyssey Honor-winning The Three Billy Goats Gruff with Jon Klassen. But the pairing with Ellis brings something new: where Klassen's minimalism offers deadpan comedy, Ellis's richness offers emotional depth and historical texture. It's a dream collaboration—Barnett's lightness balanced by Ellis's gravitas, humor held in tension with beauty.
Three starred reviews from the industry's most respected voices. Kirkus called it "deeply familiar but infused with 21st-century smarts," predicting "cries for repeated reads." Publishers Weekly highlighted the "haunting tale about the power of knowing someone's name." And Booklist praised how the creators "fill out" the original "with creative details that enrich the narrative and give context to the life of the woman at the center of the whole debacle."
This is a retelling that understands the assignment: honor the original, speak to modern children, and make something beautiful in the process.