Jon Scieszka |
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Jon Scieszka was born in Flint, Michigan on September 8th, 1954. He grew up with five brothers, has the same birthday as Peter Sellers and the Virgin Mary, and a sneaking suspicion that the characters in his Dick and Jane reader were not of this world.
Those plain facts, plus his elementary school principal dad, Louis, his registered nurse mom, Shirley (who once took Jon's Cub Scout den on a field trip to the prenatal ward), Mad Magazine, four years of pre-med undergrad, "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show", an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University, Robert Benchley, five years of painting apartments in New York City, his lovely wife Jeri Hansen who introduced him to Molly Leach and Lane Smith, Green Eggs and Ham, his teenage daughter Casey and almost teenage son Jake, ten years of teaching a little bit of everything from first grade to eighth grade, and the last twenty years of living in Brooklyn...are just some of Jon's answers to the questions, "Where do you get your ideas?" and/or "How did you become a writer?"
I don't know, just because, none of your beeswax, and flapdoodle poppycock and balderdash are some more of Jon's answers to questions you can imagine on your own.
Jon met up with Lane Smith around 1986 or so, and nothing has been the same since. Their first book, the wiseguy fairy tale retelling, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! was initially rejected by most publishers as "too weird" and "too sophisticated". Published by Viking in 1989, The True Story has now sold over a million copies, been translated into ten languages, and been called a "classic picture book for all ages".
Jon and Lane's The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (1992) took the world of the picture book a few steps further. Goofing with the conventions of fairy tales and even being a book, The Stinky Cheese Man became a household word, sold another mess of copies in multiple languages, offended a few purists, and still managed to win a Caldecott Honor medal.
Math Curse (1995) further stretched the notion of what subjects make good picture books, selling more books faster than either 3 Little Pigs or Stinky Cheese, and winning a whole slew of awards --all for a book full of mathematics.
More recently, Jon and Lane have resurrected fables (in the smart, funny, and a little bit wicked way Aesop would have wanted them) in their latest collaboration, Squids Will Be Squids (1998). No telling where they might take the picture book next.
In his picture books and his chapter books, Jon has always trusted the intelligence of kids. He sees his Time Warp Trio series of chapter books as both a tribute and an offering to all of those kids (often labeled "reluctant readers") who are looking for something entertaining and smart to read. Jon's hope is that the Time Warp books
will help kids connect to all kinds of other books. But he's also pretty thrilled with just the idea of librarians reading the Time Warp titles out loud: Knights of the Kitchen
Table; The Not-So-Jolly Roger; The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy; Your Mother is a Neanderthal; Summer Reading is Killing Me!; and See You Later, Gladiator. The avalanche of Time Warp fan mail and children-voted state reading awards for the Time Warps are the happy proof that these early chapter books have found their readers.
Someone once wrote, "Jon Scieszka has forever changed the face of children's literature." And while there is still some confusion over exactly who that someone was, and whether children's literature does, in fact, have a face, most would agree-from The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! to Squids Will Be Squids, since Scieszka put pen to paper, children's literature sure has been...different.
Favorite Answers to
Frequent Questions
Yes, I always
comb my hair like this. Well, let's just say that I'm one year younger
than my older brother and two years older than my next youngest
brother.
I think I came up with the idea for The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! after rewriting fairy tales with my second grade class. I took off a year from teaching and sat at a desk and wrote. All of the stories, including The True Story, were rejected a bunch of times.
Lane Smith (the illustrator of The True Story and The Stinky Cheese Man) and I were friends before we worked together. I knew she would do a great job because we like a lot of the same cartoons and books and ideas. And we laugh at each other's bad jokes all of the time.
I never know exactly how long it takes to write a story. I read a lot of stuff, think about different stories all the time, scribble thinks down on paper, type them up, change them, type them up again, think some more, add things....
Okay, I'll tell you the date I was born -- September 8, 1954 in Flint, Michigan, second oldest and the nicest of six boys. Now I'm married, I have two kids and live in Brooklyn, NY.
I went to school in Culver Military Academy, Indiana where I was a Lieutenant; Albion College, Michigan where I studied to be a doctor; and Columbia University, New York, where I got a M.F.A. in fiction. And yes, I always thought about being an author.
Sure I had regular jobs before I became a full time author. I was a lifeguard. I painted factories, houses, and apartments. I wrote for magazines. And I taught elementary school in New York for ten years as a 1st grade assistant, a 2nd grade homeroom teacher, and a computer, math, science and history teacher in 3rd -8th grade.
My favorite things to read are fairytales of course, myths, legends, comic books, graphic novels, history, poems, novels, science books, picture books, short stories, newspapers, funny bits, codes, hieroglyphics, encyclopedias, dictionaries, subway ads, sides of cereal boxes, matchbook covers, mattress tags, and any little scraps of paper with writing on them.
copyright ? 2000 by Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.
DATE OF BIRTH
10 September 1954
Life Story
I was born full grown in the middle of a hurricane and an earthquake on 10 September 1954,
12.52 p.m. When I found out that I had missed lunch, I gave such a shout that the earth stopped and spun backwards two days. That's why I celebrate my birthday on 8 September. Nobody had ever seen a ring-tailed, rip-roaring wowser like me. When I was one day old, I learned how to read. When I was two days old I started to write. By the time I was three, I had finished 212 short stories, 38 novels, 730 poems, and one very funny limerick, all before breakfast.
As a kid, I was faster than a cheetah, smarter than Einstein, and nicer than a hundred grandmothers put together. I wrestled wild animals in the Michigan woods, read novels by moonlight, and climbed trees blindfolded for inspiration.
I didn't need to go to school because I could out-read, out-write, and out-fight any living teacher or student. I could rhyme any word in twenty-seven languages (including 'orange'), write haiku with my left hand, and spell 'flaccinaucinihilipilification' with my right.
I'm the oldest and the very best of six boys born to Louis and Shirley Scieszka. Every year I golf a lower score, bowl a higher score, and draw a better poker hand than the rest of the Scieszka brothers.
In 1977 I met a wildcat woman who had lassoed the moon. I took one look at her. She took one look at me. Then we howled and hooted for forty days and forty nights, each trying to get the best of each other. At the end of the fortieth night we had dug the Grand Canyon, built Mt Everest and opened the Panama Canal, but neither had given an inch. So we called it a draw, fell in love, and got married.
Our daughter Casey was born in 1984. And naturally enough, she is a better writer, piano player and basketball player than anyone except her mom and dad. Jake was born two years later. And if eleven-year-olds were allowed to play on MTV and skate in the NHL, Jake would be the first starting centre with a gold record.
We live on the best street in Brooklyn, New York, with our cat Potvin (named after the Toronto Maple Leafs' goalie, Felix 'The Cat' Potvin), where the sun always shines, the garden always flowers, and the neighbours are always friendly.
I taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the Time Warp Trio novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds. I give Lane Smith all of the ideas for paintings and then instruct him in the proper use of art materials.
Our first book, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs sold thirty bazillion copies in eight languages. The Stinky Cheese Man did the same. And Maths Curse has sold twice as many as both put together. There are six Time Warp Trio books that would take a page each to fully praise. And I just thought up twelve more while I was typing this sentence.
Lane and I have been on radio shows, TV shows, in movies and on bus ads. We know Michael Jordan and Madonna, we've flown the space shuttle and are two of the friendliest, most handsome, and most humble guys you'd ever want to meet.
If you are a Jon Scieszka fan, why not e-mail him and ask him some more questions about his brilliant books. stinkcurse@aol.com
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