Jon Scieszka

FAVORITE ANSWERS TO FREQUENT QUESTIONS

Yes, I always comb my hair like this.

Well, let's just say that I'm one year younger than my older brother and two years older than my next youngest brother.

No, I wouldn't actually say I'm rich. But the author and illustrator do get money from each book sold.

I think I came up with the idea for The True Story of The 3 Little Pigs! after rewriting fairy tales with my second grade class. I took off a year from teaching and sat at a desk and wrote. All of the stories, including The True Story, were rejected a bunch of times. (Read our review of The True Story by clicking here.)

Lane Smith (the illustrator of The True Story and the Time Warp Series) and I were friends before we worked together. I knew he would do a great job because we like a lot of the same cartoons and books and ideas. And we laugh at each other's bad jokes all of the time. I gave Lane the manuscript and he thought up the newspaper cover, the cheeseburger, and all of those other illustrated details.

I never know exactly how long it takes me to write a story. I read a lot of stuff, think about different stories all the time, scribble things down on paper, type them up, change them, type them up again, think some more, add things...

Okay, I'll tell you the date I was born - September 8, 1954 in Flint, Michigan, second oldest and the nicest of six boys. Now I am married, I have two kids, and live in Brooklyn, New York.

I went to school in Culver Military Academy, Indiana where I was a Lieutenant; Albion College, Michigan where I studied to be a doctor; and Columbia University, New York where I got a M.F.A. -in- Fiction. And yes, I always thought about being an author.

Sure I had regular jobs before I became a full time writer. I was a lifeguard. I painted factories, houses, and apartments. I wrote for magazines. And I taught elementary school in New York for ten years as a 1st grade assistant, a 2nd grade homeroom teacher, and a computer, math, science and history teacher in 3rd - 8th grade.

My favorite things to read are fairy tales of course, myths, legends, comic books, graphic novels, history, poems, novels, science books, picture books, short stories, newspapers, funny bits, codes, hieroglyphics, encyclopedias, dictionaries, subway ads, sides of cereal boxes, matchbook covers, mattress tags, and any little scraps of paper with writing on them.

Someday I might write for adults, but I think kids are the greatest audience for a writer. No one can believe a story or love one as much as a kid does.
copyright Penguin USA

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