Our first kids’ book laureate takes literacy a lot more seriously than he takes himself

Jon Scieszka, the man who gave new meaning to the word stinky, is on a serious mission. Early last month, the Children’s Book Council and the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book tapped the author of The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (Viking, 1992) as our first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Scieszka’s two-year charge? Nothing less than “to raise national awareness of the importance” of children’s books. With his good-natured wit and knack for knowing what kids need, Scieszka seems like the perfect guy for the challenge. A former grade-school teacher, he’s also the creator of Guys Read (www.guysread.com), a literacy program that wants boys to know that reading can be just as absorbing as waving a Wii controller. Simon & Schuster has published the first installment of “Jon Scieszka’s Trucktown,” an ambitious new series of more than 50 books and videos created by the popular author and others, aimed at the squirming preschool set. Sitting in the book-stuffed study of his Brooklyn, NY, brownstone, Scieszka appeared ready to jump right into his new role. What was your reaction when you were asked to be our nation’s first children’s book laureate? I was so honored that they chose me. My first response was kind of, “Do you know who you’re asking? I’m the guy who wrote The Stinky Cheese Man.” It’s still mind-boggling. As far as I know, there’s not an official description of what a children’s book ambassador should do. Some of Britain’s laureates have done serious stuff that’s made a real difference in kids’ lives—like Jacqueline Wilson’s campaign to encourage parents to read to their children before bedtime—while others have delivered inspiring speeches and cut ribbons. Where do you see yourself on that continuum? What’s so exciting about being America’s first children’s laureate is that it’s a chance to really mold the position. I’m going to do some of those really serious things, but almost in the same way that I do my books—by first engaging and entertaining people, and then kind of burying the message in there, so I don’t freak people out. What else turns you on about the new position? I’m excited about being able to present the world of kids’ books to the public at large in a way that might make them stop and go, “Wow! There’s more to this than I thought.” I think children’s books just get written off. We get a paragraph in the New York Times every year when the Newbery and Caldecott winners are announced and then nobody hears about children’s books during the rest of the year. As our kids’ book ambassador, what will you do? A big part of my platform will be to reach reluctant readers and to put their parents at ease, especially those parents who are worried about testing or their kids not reading. I can be the official guy who says, “Take a deep breath; relax. Let’s not freak out about these tests. We know kids are having trouble reading. But we’ve got the answer for you. Let’s stop testing kids and beating them with a stick. Let’s try the carrot. Let’s let them read good books, because we’ve got a lot of them. Let’s let kids enjoy reading.” A lot of people think that only boys are reluctant to read. A big portion of that reluctant reader group is boys. But what I found from working with the Guys Read program is that what applies to boys, applies to almost any reader. It’s important to find out who each kid is, pay some individual attention to that kid, then find out what he enjoys reading. What I like to tell people is that they really need to expand their definition of what reading is. I think that’s the first step, because people are still a little leery about kids reading graphic novels or comic books or any visual narrative. But if you work with kids, like we have, you know that kids respond to that stuff. Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, was recently quoted in a New York Times article as saying, “If we’re going to use comics in the classroom at all, which I have serious debates about, it should only be as a motivational tool.” Did you see that? Yeah. It made me spit my coffee on the paper. That seems 180-degrees opposite from what you’re talking about. That seems to be running directly backward. That’s why I’m so glad that I can be more than just “Oh, here’s this guy, Jon Scieszka.” Now, I can be Jon Scieszka, your national ambassador with the laureate laurel on and the tiara and the sash and the staff. I’ve got to work on all that extra stuff, so I can sound official. You could get a fancy vest and robes. I need some gear—laureate swag—and just to come out and be official and say, “Take a break. Comics are OK.” I love Lisa Von Drasek, the librarian at Bank Street College. She’s somebody who knows that you’re not watering down the curriculum when you use comics. If you work with a bunch of kids, like Lisa does, and you see the work that they put into reading a comic or decoding an entire graphic novel, you realize it’s spectacular stuff. So why would we cut off our nose just to uphold some imaginary standards? And the same thing is true of a lot of other genres that used to be looked down on, like science fiction and fantasy. Can you talk more about that? Thank God for Harry Potter. It instantly elevated an entire group of books that people used to dismiss and say, like, “Hmm.” You know, science fiction was always regarded as suspect, like it wasn’t legitimate reading. The same goes for nonfiction. I mean, more people should know about Russell Freedman and Jim Murphy. They should be names that come to people’s minds when they think of great writing. It seems like the education and the children’s literature establishments tend to see serious literary fiction—something many boys aren’t comfortable with—as the absolute pinnacle of reading. Yeah, that’s really at the heart of the problem. The public thinks, “Well, of course, we read nonfiction back when we were in school—we had to do reports.” When I was teaching second and third grade, my students’ parents were weirded out when their kids read nonfiction. They’d say, “He’s just reading about alligators or sharks or volcanoes or fighting ships.” [Laughs.] I used to say, “That’s fantastic! Let him go. Let him read about fighting ships for the next three weeks. He’s doing some incredible work.” What can educators do to make books and reading more appealing to kids? The thing teachers and librarians can do is to really step back and take a look at their required-reading lists: they don’t have to be all fiction; they can include alternative genres—and they should absolutely include some nonfiction. Humor is another genre that gets slighted. You don’t see that many funny books on required-reading lists. Thank God Holes got the Newbery Medal, because otherwise I think people would have just skipped over it and said, “Ah, Louis Sachar, he writes some funny stuff.” People often think that humorous books aren’t really legitimate. So all of those things—nonfiction, graphic novels, science fiction, humor—should be on teachers’ and librarians’ lists. What I’ve found, too, is that a lot of boys just don’t gravitate toward serious fiction. Teachers will recommend their favorite book and feel personally insulted when the kid goes, “Uh, Little House on the Prairie? I’m not really feeling it. Do you have another shark book?” Maybe Little Shark on the Prairie would work. Do you plan to use the Internet as part of your new role? I was just thinking about that last week. I think the Internet’s something people haven’t taken advantage of, and it’s just there for the taking. There should definitely be a laureate’s Web page, at the very least, and there should also be some video. It would be nice to include a crazy pick of the week or an author or book of the month—find some odd book to promote that kids might not see otherwise. It would be a way to get out there without going to, say, every school library ribbon-cutting ceremony. The thing that I really want to make happen with this position is to be out in the public eye. I can go on those crappy morning shows, where they ask some inane question. I can use that as a platform and say, “Thanks for asking about nothing, but let me tell you how to involve kids in reading.”

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Walter Minkel manages the New York Public Library’s Early Childhood Resource and Information Center.