Max Greenfield knows that anxieties can keep our mind racing at night. Even the most far-fetched ones.

“It’s totally normal to be scared of a shark if you’re in the water and a shark is swimming toward you,” says Greenfield, an actor most known for his roles on sitcoms New Girl and The Neighborhood. “It’d be weird if you weren’t scared. But if you’re thinking about a shark when you’re lying in bed at night, and you’re in your room, miles and miles away from the ocean, why? It’s a valid fear, but it’s not one that we should be holding on to right now.”

Greenfield is also the author of a trilogy for kids who struggle with reading: I Don’t Want to Read This Book (2021), This Book Is Not a Present (2022), and I Don’t Want to Read This Book Aloud (2023). In his new title, Good Night Thoughts (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, September), he hopes to help readers put their fears to bed.

Before he took the stage at the American Library Association’s 2024 Annual Conference and Exhibition, American Libraries spoke with Greenfield about his own anxieties and how his friendship with the late actor Leslie Jordan inspired his latest work.

The announcement for your book quoted you as saying, “I’m scared ALL the time! About anything and everything.” What were some things you feared as a kid, and how did you handle those fears?

I don’t know if I handled any of them. I think they’re all still raging. I’m scared of what was, or I’m scared of what’s going to happen. And both of those things prevent me from just being here with you right now.

And then a lot of the time, you’re just like, “I think I’m just tired. Maybe these thoughts are because I’m just tired, and I should just allow myself to accept that I’m okay.”

Can you describe the book’s approach?

Good Night Thoughts (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, September)

One of the things the book does that I really love is that it doesn’t dismiss the fears. It doesn’t say you shouldn’t be afraid of them. It doesn’t judge them in any way. It’s just saying that they may not exist right now. We’re just trying to say: You’re not being attacked by a shark right now. There isn’t a shark in your room. So let’s try to put that idea to sleep.

You’ve spoken about your friendship with late actor Leslie Jordan and how conversations you had with him influenced this book—particularly, an exercise you did together in which you wrote down your fears and asked each other, “What on that list is actually in front of you right now?”

He really was the reason this book came about. He had just passed away, and I remembered a lot of those conversations, and it felt like, “Oh, that could be a book.” It really does feel like a wonderful way to honor him, and he feels very much a part of this.

I experience a lot of these fears during the day, mostly when I first wake up in the morning. But it’s weird to have a book about first waking up in the morning. It made complete sense to make it about taking these fears and how we can put them to bed before we go to sleep.

How do your own kids influence your books?

[My kids] are a very good sounding board. They’re quick to give notes. The first [book] was when my daughter, Lilly, was right at the age where reading was one of those things like, “I’m being asked to read out of school?” There were books that [her school] would send home during the pandemic, and neither one of us can read these books. She wrote one of her teachers and was like, “Yeah, my dad’s having trouble with this book.” And I go, “Please don’t write that to your teacher.”

I remember asking her and her friend Tilly, “What do you not like about reading?” And Tilly goes, “I don’t know. I just feel like I have more important things to do.” That’s definitely in one of the books.

I read Good Night Thoughts a lot with my son. There were a couple different versions I read to him, maybe more than a couple of different versions. At some point, he was like, “I know this one already.” I was like, “I know, just hear me out here.”

How have libraries influenced your life or your work?

Libraries were a place that I was maybe a little scared of.  I didn’t necessarily feel like I belonged, because reading was not something that came easy to me.

When I go to my daughter’s [school] library now—she’s just starting high school—there’s a vibrancy. People are working, people are getting things done in there—at least it looks that way, they might just be on their phone—and you want to be a part of that energy. There are things to discover, there are things to learn. And it made me nervous. But I think that’s why we wrote the first three books: to have a different conversation about what reading is, how we feel about it, and what it can mean to you.

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