In doing this he follows the pioneering examples of other great writers in children's literature, such as L. Frank Baum, E. Nesbit, and Dr. Seuss. "What Scieszka has done," writes Patrick Jones and Christine Miller in
Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, "is make a book equivalent of a happy meal--taking the things that most kids like in books like humor, adventure, fairy tales, and plain old silliness, and combining them into easy to read tomes which will indeed appeal to an audience of all ages." "Our audience is hardcore silly kids," Scieszka tells Smith. "And there are a lot of 'em out there."
Jon Scieszka attended Columbia University and studied writing there. He intended, says Amanda Smith in a Publishers Weekly interview, to "write the Great American novel." The author reports, "Then I taught first and second grade and got sidetracked." Later he realized that a children's book is a condensed short story, and since he enjoyed writing short stories, he decided to try writing children's books. He remarked that it was surprising he hadn't thought of writing for children sooner, since he came from a large family, had always loved children, was the son of an elementary school teacher, and had enjoyed being a teacher himself.
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