Photograph of Jon Scieszka taken by photographer Marty Umans, 2008. Retrieved from Wikipedia (accessed: February 2, 2022).
Jon Scieszka
, b. 1954
Jon Scieszka was born in Flint, Michigan, United States in 1954. He was the second of six sons born to his parents, who had emigrated to America from Poland. In his autobiography, Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing Up Scieszka (2008), he reveals that many of his writing ideas originate from his childhood experiences. His mother was a nurse and his father the principal of an elementary school. Scieszka considered becoming a doctor and studied both Science and English at Albion College, Albion, Michigan, before moving to New York as an aspiring writer. In 1980 he graduated from Columbia University with a Master of Fine Arts. He taught at an elementary school and worked as a house painter while seeking publishers for his children’s stories. He met and began collaborating with illustrator Lane Smith. After numerous rejections, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (1989) was published by Viking Press, and has since won many awards, sold over three million copies, and been translated into fourteen languages. Scieszka’s books often employ parodic and intertextual elements to rework traditional fairy tales, including The Frog Prince Continued (1991) The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (1992) and The Book that Jack Wrote (1994). The Time Warp Trio series (1991-2006) contains lighthearted depictions of various historical epochs, as well as engaging with literary classics. The series includes a book on Greek mythology, It’s All Greek to Me (1999) as well as See You Later Gladiator. Scieszka is a passionate advocate for boys’ literacy and is the founder of the Guys Read program (guysread.com). In 2008 he was named as America’s first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the 13th Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington.
Bio prepared by Miriam Riverlea, University of New England, mriverlea@gmail.com
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