September 8 - Happy Birthday, Jon Scieszka

Posted on September 8, 2018

Math Curse is such a great book, in my opinion...

It starts out with the words:
On Monday in math class, Mrs. Finbonacci says, "You know, you can think of almost everything as a math problem." 
On Tuesday I start having problems...

Pretty soon the kid in this book starts thinking about almost everything in his life as a math problem! And of course that's because math connects to almost everything.

Anything that can be counted or measured has to do with math. Anything that has a shape or a size pertains to math. 

Math is...everywhere!

Today's famous birthday, Jon Scieszka, shows us all of this with a lot of humor - and illustrator Lane Smith injects even more humor!

Scieszka, who was born on this date in 1954, has written lots of other books, too, including a series called The Time Warp TrioScieszka also does good stuff to encourage kids to read. For example, he started a internet-based program that encourages boys, in particular, to read; it's called Guys Read. This is because research shows that boys tend to read less than girls (and not just in the U.S.!).


By the way, I checked out "Guys Read" on the web, and it is under reconstruction right now - with promises of bigger and better in the near future. Apparently the program had been going strong for 15 years before this update...

Scieszka was the first United Nations Ambassador for Young People's Literature, during the years 2008 and 2009. He got to travel all over, meeting kids at schools and libraries and meeting kids' authors at conferences.

Scieszka writes one series called Trucktown. There are board books for the littlest kids, picture books for toddlers, early reader books for kids learning to read, and even activity books. I'll have to look into these books - I know a certain little kid who loves-loves-loves trucks!







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