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Author of the Week - Jon Scieszka

Jon Scieszka was born in 1954 in Flint, Michigan. In his family there were six children, all boys. His father worked as an elementary school principal. Jon's grandparents were from Poland, hence the last name which means "path" in Polish. In high school Jon went to a military academy, then thought about studying to be a doctor, but instead he got a degree in Science and English, and then an MFA in Fiction. Jon then went to teach elementary school, a career that obviously plays a large part in his writing. In Jon's words, elementary school helped him re-discover how smart kids are and that the best audience for his weird and funny stories were these children. He took a year off from teaching and began to write children's stories. As he was writing, Jon met an illustrator named Lane Smith through his wife. Lane immediatly fell in love with Jon's stories. Despite numerous rejections of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Lane and Jon kept trying to find a publishers, until an editor at Viking Press with the same sense of humor picked it up. In 1989, Jon and Lane publishers their first book. Over the last two decades Jon and Lane have worked together on 8 pictures books and 8 Time Warp Trio's, which have been adapted into a television show. Jon had published over two dozen books including The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Math Curse, The Frog Prince Continued, Welcome to Trucktown!, Robot Zot, and his newest book Spaceheadz. Jon has won numerous awards and was named by the American Library Association as the National Ambassador for young People's Literature.


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