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June 2009
Jon Scieszka
Brief Biography
Jon Scieszka was born in Flint, Michigan in 1954 and grew up with 5 brothers and no sisters. He has taught every grade from 1st through 8th. His first book was originally entitled A. Wolf's Tale. It was rejected by a number of publishers until Viking took it up, retitled it The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, and published it in 1989. Scieszka has won many awards and his books have sold more than 11 million copies worldwide. His Time Warp Trio series of books is now a television show. He started a guys' literacy website called Guys Read and was named America's first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. You can read much more about Jon and his books, as weel as the names of his 75 pet ants at www.jsworldwide.com or, you can read about his life growing up in Knucklehead. Knucklehead is a collection of tall tales and mostly true stories about growing up Scieszka and is great for reluctant readers since each section is only a couple pages long.
Guys Read is Scieszka's web-based literacy program to help boys find books they like to read. Guys Write for Guys Read is a collection of 92 short stories, mini-memoirs, comics, poems and drawings written by boys' favorite authors all about being boys. Each contribution is only a couple pages long and is followed by the author's biographical information (where they grew up, where they live now, and one random fact about them) as well as a 3 book bibliography. 90 different authors have contributed to this fantastic collection. But don't think that just because it has the word 'guys' on the cover twice, and the word 'boys' on the cover an additional two times, that this book is just for boys. Lots of girls will have just as much fun reading this book. The Guys Read website is www.guysread.com.
Fairy Tales and Fables
The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs tells Mr. Wolf's side of the story- his severe sneezing cold, his urgent need for a cup of sugar, and the subsequent media frame-up.
The Frog Prince Continued tells the story of what happened after happily ever after for the Frog Prince and his princess.
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales won a Caldecott Honor. When the little old man and little old woman ran out of gingerbread, they made a stinky cheese man instead. In Scieszka and Smith's hands, some of our favorite fairy tales take on a whole new and unexpected twist. "The Ugly Duckling" becomes "The Really Ugly Duckling", "The Princess and the Pea" becomes "The Princess and the Bowling Ball", and Chicken Little keeps interrupting Jack's narration with concerns about her bread.
After tackling the Grimm Brothers, Perrault, and Andersen in The Stinky Cheese Man, Scieszka and Smith took on Aesop and his fables. Read these educational beastly fables which demonstrate such morals as "Don't play with matches", "There are some things we don't talk about at the dinner table", "He who smelt it dealt it", and "Whatever looks like a pigeon and acts like a pigeon usually makes good pigeon pie." These are only a small selection of the hilarious and entertaining morals to be learned in Squids Will Be Squids.
On Monday in Math class, Mrs. Fibonacci said "you know you can think of everything as a math problem." After that, everything is a math problem for the narrator, until he learns how to break the Math Curse. But then on Wednesday in Science class, Mr. Newton says "you know, if you listen closely enough you can hear the poetry of science in everything." After that, the narrator can't help but see Science Verse everywhere. With parodies of numerous famous poems and songs, including "I've been working on the food chain," Scieszka and Smith make both Science and Poetry fun.
An alien transmission proves to be one alien boy's very tall intergalactic tale of his excuse for being late to school once again. Strangely, the story was cobbled together with words from many different earth languages, even if they do seem to be in an alien language at first. Learn the Finnish for morning, the Melanesian Pidgin for picture as well as the Spoonerism for flying saucer. . . sighing flosser.
Seen Art is a museum tour, Scieszka style. When a little guy goes to meet his friend, Art, at the corner of 5th Avenue and 53rd Street in New York, Art isn't there. He asks a passing pedestrian whether she had seen art and she directs him to the newly redisigned Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Cowboy and Octopus: 2 friends, 7 stories, a cowboy and an octopus.
Question: What happens when 3 regular boys from Brooklyn get a mysterious blue Book with silver designs on it's cover?
Answer: They become the Time Warp Trio when they learn that the mysterious Book can take them anywhere in time or space. Read the books that inspired the television show.
The Time Warp Trio Series
Book 1: Knights of the Kitchen Table…the Time Warp Trio meets King Arthur
Book 2: The Not-So-Jolly Roger…the Time Warp Trio meet Blackbeard the pirate
Book 3: The Good, The Bad, and the Goofy…the Time Warp Trio experience the wild, wild West
Book 4: Your Mother Was a Neanderthal…the Time Warp Trio go Stone Age
Book 5: 2095…the Time Warp Trio travel to the future
Book 6: Tut, Tut…think "pyramids"
Book 7: Summer Reading is Killing Me!…the Time Warp Trio fight literature's villains…in Hoboken
Book 8: It's All Greek to Me…the Time Warp Trio meet Cerberus, and worse
Book 9: See You Later, Gladiator…the Time Warp Trio face a gladiator in the Colosseum
Book 10: Sam Samurai…the Time Warp Trio travel back to 17th century Japan
Book 11: Hey Kid, Want to Buy a Bridge?…the Time Warp Trio land on the half-finished Brooklyn Bridge
Book 12: Viking It and Liking It. . . the Time Warp Trio take a ride with Leif Eriksson
Book 13: Me Oh Maya…the Time Warp Trio face a Mayan High Priest
Book 14: Da Wild, Da Crazy, Da Vinci…Leonardo Da Vinci wants the Time Warp Trio to quit spying on him
Book 15: Oh Say, I Can't See…the Time Warp Trio try to find a robot cat at Washington's camp on Dec. 25th, 1776
Book 16: Marco? Polo!…the Time Warp Trio play Marco? Polo! in 13th century China, with the man himself
Jon Scieszka's Trucktown
A new series of books created by Jon Scieszla just for toddlers and kindergarteners who love trucks. The Trucktown series includes picture books, board books, and beginning to read books and is published by Simon & Schuster.
Picture Books
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| Smash! Crash! | Melvin Might? |
Board Books
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| Vroom! It's Color Time | Who's That Truck? | What a Wreck? |
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| Smash that Trash | Meet Jack Truck | On the Move! |
Beginning to Read Books
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| Pete's Party | Snow Trucking! | Uh-Oh Max | Zoom! Boom! Bully |