Getting Boys on the Same Page

Jon Scieszka is speaking in tongues.

“Aamu . . . “

“Deski . . .”

“Kuningas . . . “

A moment of religious ecstasy?

“Pordo . . . “

“Razzo . . .”

“Torakku . . . “

Berlitz gone berserk?

Actually, the Brooklyn author is merely quoting from his just released children’s book, “Baloney (Henry P.).” The giddy tale, about a chronically tardy space boy facing Permanent Lifelong Detention, weaves in bits of Welsh, Swahili, Latvian, Esperanto, Inukititut, Melanesian Pidgin and a few other languages not typically heard on the average American playground.

A bit much for kids? Scieszka (SHESS-ka) doesn’t think so. The former elementary school teacher and father of two believes children are vastly underestimated. To him, young minds are as stretchable as Silly Putty.

Besides, “Baloney” (illustrated by Scieszka’s longtime collaborator Lane Smith) includes a handy-dandy “decoder” page. What kid could resist that?

Certainly not Scieszka, who, at 46, seems more in touch with his inner child than a Cub Scout on a sugar buzz. Sitting in a midtown Manhattan restaurant amid business suits and hushed discussions, the bestselling author talks about sublime hippopotamuses, creatures made of stinky cheese, and how Arnold Lobel’s classic “Frog and Toad” books are, for him, a Zen experience.

Question is: Can a guy who once conjured up a debate between a duck-billed platypus and a stick of beef jerky ever be taken seriously? Scieszka sure hopes so. Because now, after 15 years of making his living thinking like a kid, he has something to say to adults--men in particular.

It’s called Guys Read, a literacy program aimed at boys ages 8 and older. Scieszka says he came up with the idea many years ago after he and his publisher, Regina Hayes of Viking, compared notes on how their sons began losing interest in reading midway through elementary school.

The more Scieszka looked into it, the worse the statistics seemed to get. Not only have boys scored lower than girls in reading every since the U.S. Department of Education began monitoring results in 1969, boys are far more likely to be held back a grade. And remedial reading programs, Scieszka believes, make boys feel worse not only about books, but about themselves, leading to wider problems.

“It’s horrendous,” Scieszka says. “Boys have done worse in reading every year, in every grade, every year since the U.S. Department of Education began tests. But there’s no literacy group for boys. There’s a literacy group for pregnant moms. There’s a literacy group for inmates. There’s literacy for English as a second language. There’s nothing for boys. Boys are [viewed] like criminals in school; they’re seen as toxic. And I’d like to save boys from that.”

Scieszka, who also has a daughter, is quick to stress that Guys Read is not anti-girl, but pro-boy. He refers to school programs that encourage girls to embrace math and sciences and doesn’t see why it can’t work the other way around.

Besides, he believes that getting boys to read will help girls--and, years later, women--in the long run. The more a child reads, the more he understands and appreciates the world around him. Not just in facts and figures, but with the emotional qualities found at the heart of literature.

The first step, he says, is to convince boys that reading can be for them. Sure, the Harry Potter craze did wonders, but Scieszka is seeking long-term results. He believes most literacy campaigns are too generic, featuring slogans like “Reading is Wonderful!” or “Reading is Magic!” Current TV spots from the National Basketball Assn.--in which players encourage reading--are adequate, he says, but boys would be better helped if they were to hear the specific titles that athletes loved and read as youngsters.

Laker coach Phil Jackson would be the perfect Guys Read model, Scieszka says, because Jackson recommends books to his players based on their individual personalities. “He doesn’t just tell them, ‘Reading is wonderful, fellas! Let’s all go read a book!’ Let’s not all read a book. Let’s find a book that makes sense to you, that makes you more of a person.”

That’s the kind of thinking Scieszka hopes to pass on to elementary schools, where roughly 80% of teachers are women. As a teacher in New York, Scieszka saw firsthand how boys lost interest in books, especially when faced with prescribed reading lists. (His book, “Summer Reading Is Killing Me,” is a hilarious take on the subject.)

“ ‘Little House on the Prairie’ is the classic,” Scieszka says. “It’s required reading in, I swear, every school in the country. It was death for my second-grade [boys]. They were going, ‘Mr. Scieszka, do we have to read this? Nothing is happening!’ ”

Which is part of the reason Scieszka started writing children’s books in the first place. One of six brothers, he’s always been well-versed in guy speak. He knows the Boy Brain inside and out. His “Time Warp Trio” series of books--packed with action, suspense, humor and some really cool facts about math, history and science--have sold into the millions. But Scieszka, an affable sort, shrugs at his success.

“You have to really draw [boys] into reading and the way to do that is to make [the book] look cool,” he says. “You can’t make up preachy books about learning and history. You just tell them interesting things, like, ‘Did you know that the Egyptians pulled brains out through noses when they mummified people?’ Guys go, ‘Whoa! That’s cool!’ ”

Sounds simple, but publishers initially didn’t want Scieszka’s work. Editors told him his stories were too weird, too sophisticated, that kids would never get it. Scieszka’s friend Smith, an illustrator for national magazines, heard similar comments about his art. But Hayes, at Viking, saw differently and launched what is now one of the most successful teams in children’s books.

Young readers clamored for Scieszka and Smith’s uproarious debut, “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs,” which poked fun at traditional tales. A few years later, “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales,” was proclaimed a milestone in postmodern children’s literature, “bringing playfully deconstructive ideas to the field of children’s books,” says Roger Sutton, editor of the influential Horn Book magazine, a review publication for children’s books.

Scieszka’s “Time Warp Trio” books, about three time-traveling boys, is currently in development with a PBS television affiliate in Boston. Overall, 4 million copies of his books have been sold.

With Guys Read, he is looking to give back. The campaign kicked off earlier this month when Scieszka delivered his keynote address at the International Reading Assn. conference in New Orleans. Although the campaign, sponsored by the Assn. of Booksellers for Children, is only in its beginning stages, Scieszka hopes to attract more sponsors and recruit celebrities to push his message (Laker coach Jackson and skateboarder Tony Hawk are high on his wish list).

But Guys Read (https://www.guysread.com) also has a grass-roots strategy, namely the series of father-son book clubs Scieszka is starting to promote. He and his 15-year-old son, Jake, participate in one such club that their neighbor started. That, Scieszka says, is Guys Read in a nutshell: men taking time--making time--to show boys that reading is fun, cool . . . and definitely guy-worthy.

No decoder page necessary.