Author Jon Scieszka was recently appointed by the Library of Congress to be our "National Reading Ambassador." He is most well-known for co-authoring, "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales," and writing "The Time Warp Trio" series of books.
What sets him apart is that for years he has sounded an alarm about the falling literacy rate in this country among young people, and especially about the growing gender divide between the reading abilities of girls and guys.
His message includes the tenet that "young boys enjoy the gross and the weird," so why not get them hooked on something fun to read instead of plunging right into the classics?
You can learn more about this at his website: http://www.guysread.com.
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One day a gorilla escaped from the zoo. They searched for him everywhere: parks, trees, backyards, greenhouses, everywhere they thought a gorilla might go. They even announced the disappearance in all the news media, hoping that someone would report seeing him, but no one called.
After several days, the gorilla was finally found ... sitting in the local public library. He was in the Reading Room with two books spread on a low table in front of him.
One book was a Bible, the other a copy of Darwin's "Origin of Species." The gorilla appeared to be reading both with great concentration, eyes and fingers flipping from one book to the next.
One of the zookeepers finally whispered, "What do you suppose he's doing?"
"I think," replied the librarian, whispering back, "that he's trying to discover whether he's his brother's keeper, or his keeper's brother."
[selected from Andychap's The_Funnies with edits and rewrites by Mark Raymond]
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WORDS for YOUR WEEK: "Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it." (P.J. O'Rourke)
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