An Ambassador for Children's Reading
As parents know only too well, America's children aren't reading very much or very well these days. Concerns about the situation keep growing as scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have shown little improvement in the past 15 years.
In an effort to turn matters around, the Library of Congress and the Children's Book Council, a trade group, announced the appointment of the USA's first "ambassador for young people's literature," a sort of poet laureate for the Harry Potter set.
As the inaugural ambassador, they named Jon Scieszka--a renowned author of 30 books.
Children are attracted to his irreverent style. For example, the hero of his most popular story, The Stinky Cheese Man, is in fact a tiny wheel of smelly cheese.
And here is an example of one of his passages from another book called Science Verse:
Mary had a little worm.
She thought it was a chigger.
But everything that Mary ate,
Only made it bigger.
OK, that's pretty funny, actually.
Would you like the payoff?
It came with her to school one day,
And gave the kids a fright,
Especially when the teacher said,
"Now, that's a parasite."
And that's the Big Idea: Make kids laugh and they'll keep reading. If you would like to learn more, you can go to his website at http://www.jsworldwide.com/
