The Future Book

By Mac Barnett & Shawn Harris

Reviewed by Lara Cain Gray

In the future, things are different. The sun is called the moon, and the moon is called the sun. Bananas are called apples. And apples? Well there’s no word for apples because they don’t exist. This is the premise – and story rhythm – of Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris’s vision of a non specific distant time where this picture book (according to press) is extremely famous and popular. Rather than focussing on wild technology or dystopian landscapes, this future is pleasingly silly, colourful, and just close enough to our current lives to make it relatable.

Mac Barnett is a prolific writer for children (and beyond) whose notable collaborators include John Klassen and Carson Ellis. Shawn Harris is also an accomplished author/illustrator whose loose watercolour-style illustrations are bright and optimistic. The book also pops from the shelf thanks to silver embellishments and splashes of the very specific fluoro green reserved for aliens and computer screens in movies.

Overall, this book is pure fun. Many people in the future are called Charlie Cheese Face. When you sneeze, it’s polite to say “Forgive me, Susan.” In the future, when you’re leaving someone you say “You smell like a baby!”; in the present, I expect these expressions will catch on easily in a home or classroom. If you want to explore deeper readings, you could find them – for example, why certain foods may not exist in the future. But the greatest pleasure to be had here is laugh-out-loud reading and the likelihood of a young person wanting to share the story with friends or siblings.

Simon & Schuster (Australian edition), March 2026

Mac Barnett

Shawn Harris

Lara Cain Gray is the author of The Grown-Ups Guide to Picture Books.