Jon Scieszka - First Ever National Ambassador for Young People's Literature

"I've had great reaction from kids," Scieszka says. "There's a chapter in it called 'Crossing Swords,' about all of us brothers going to the bathroom at once. I was visiting a school with about 300 third-graders, and it was one of the things I was reading to them. By the third day a teacher came to me and quietly asked if perhaps I could skip that story: There were complaints from the custodian about the mess in the bathroom. That's the power of the written word - it can cause havoc!" Scieszka cries with relish. "But I've got diplomatic immunity."

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One of the widest planks in Scieszka's ambassadorial platform is to broaden adults' ideas of what reading is. "My first tip is to include not just fiction in your idea of reading. Include graphic novels, include 'Calvin and Hobbes.' Third- and fourth-grade boys devour those - and they're really sophisticated, but parents will say, 'Oh, that's not really reading.'"

Online reading is certainly reading, too, he asserts, and it's foolish to ignore new media. . . .

The point he wants to underline, though, is that "reading can do things that those other media can't. Reading is important, it gets at the heart of how people think. It's the basis of democracy to have informed citizens who don't fall for some quick slogan or easy phrase."

'Mr. Ambassador' Jon Scieszka is crazy about kids