Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
And … isn’t it just mind-boggling that chances are, if you are reading this, that you know exactly what happens next with Humpty?
Just like a reader over 200 years ago?
Before I started writing for kids, I taught elementary school in New York City. A little bit of everything. From 1stgrade to 8th Grade. From math to science to reading to writing.
And it was from my kids that I learned how to learn – by playing.
This is me with my very first class of 2nd graders. Someone forgot it was Hat Day. My kids realized we could use anything as a hat.
So this is what we looked like (also dressed to go to gym class) when the photographer came to take our Hat Day picture.
The educational theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, Froebel and Montessori explained the importance of play.
My kids showed me.
When I started writing, I first played around with who might be telling a story in one fairy tale.
Then I played around with all the parts of a book, and a whole pile of fairy tales.
Then I just couldn’t resist playing around with history.
And math. And science.
Now I have a new book I have been working on forever.
Is it playing around? Of course it is.
With a classic of children’s literature? How did you guess?
My latest book is me and amazing illustrator Julia Rothman playing around with nursery rhymes from hundreds of years ago.
And we are playing around specifically with the 1916 edition of The Real Mother Goose, illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright.
Julia and I took 6 classic nursery rhymes, and messed around with each one of them 6 different ways. In the same way that the Dada artists of 1916 played around with what we think of as art – cutting it up and re-assembling it.
Our book is The Real DADA Mother Goose.
When kids ask me the all-important question: “Where do you get your ideas?” I never used to know exactly how to answer. Then one day, during the Author Presentation Question and Answer moment, a third grade girl raised her hand and gave me the answer.
“I know where you get your ideas. You take other people’s stuff and mess it up.”
Exactly.
Happily.
Playfully
Jon Scieszka taught elementary school in NYC for 10 years. He has been writing for kids for over 30 years, and is the author of more books than he can count. He is also the founder of the Guys Read literacy initiative. And he was named our nation’s first National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress.