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THINK ABOUT IT
I'm always at bit of a loss for what to tell people when they ask me what my books are about.
What should I tell them—An innocent wolf? Time traveling wiseguys? The de-construction of well known forms of children's literature?
Beefsnakstiks and spanking heads? The innate intelligence of children in their search for meaning and identity? A little man made of stinky cheese?
Last month the answer came to me. And, as usual, it came from the mind of a kid. A librarian given the task of handing me the Jo Osborne Award
for Humor at the Ohio State Children's Literature Conference decided to ask a group of experts what Jon Scieszka books were all about. She asked her students.
They had hundreds of wonderful answers. But the one that struck me like the thunderbolt of truth was the comment from a little girl who had just
read Squids Will Be Squids.
"Jon Scieszka books are like his moral for the fable at the end of the book: Think about it."
And there it was, in three words—the answer I had been stumbling around in search of for all these years. I had written it myself, but it
took a nine-year-old to explain it to me. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.
"Think about it" is exactly what I would hope all my readers will do. Think about who's telling you the story and why they are telling it. Think
about what you would do if you were transported back to the time of King Arthur, Blackbeard the pirate, or the Stone Age. Think about where the Table of Contents and the endpapers usually show up in a book.
Think about whether you or anyone you know has ever acted like Grasshopper, Ant, or Duck Billed Platypus.
As much as adults underestimate the wisdom of kids, they also tend to distrust and underestimate humor. If something is funny, they think, it
can't be really important or educational. But I think just the opposite is true. Good humor is important and educational in an essential way. The best humor is always built from the truth of experience.
Kids (and those smart adults who still know how to be playful like kids) are my best audience because they are willing to play around with
stories, laugh, and think about things in new and unexpected ways.
Are kids smart? Can books be funny and important? Is every sentence in this paragraph going to be a question? What are Jon Scieszka books about?
Think about it. •
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About the Author:
Jon Scieszka's keen eye has helped him write Squids Will Be Squids, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Math Curse, and the Time Warp Trio series. He lives and does most of his thinking in Brooklyn with with his wife and two kids. Jon also shares a home in cyberspace with his illustrative collaborator, Lane Smith.
To contact this author or illustrator, please use the information for his or her publisher provided on our list of CBC member publishers.
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