[LISTENED TO: March 30, 2013] Knucklehead
We were looking for a good audio book for the kids and I stumbled upon this, an autobiography from Jon Scieszka. We love Scieszka’s books (Stinky Cheese Man and the Time Warp Trio among others) and figured that this autobiography had to be good for a few laughs too. And we were very much correct.
This is a funny book about what it was like to grow up as the second oldest of six brothers in Flint, Michigan. It’s not really about being an author (although he does talk about where he gets ideas), it’s really about his childhood. Most of the anecdotes in the book are things that he and his brothers got up to and how his father used to affectionately call all six of them knuckleheads.
The book has almost 40 chapters, all of them very short (as befitting the author of books for reluctant readers). And each one has a pretty good set up and punchline. Like how the older brothers used to tease the youngest ones or how Jon and his brother burnt a dry cleaning bag because it dropped little plastic bombs onto a battlefield–in the basement. Or how he and his brother peed on the space heater because they thought that would put it out (that seems suspect, but it could have happened.
We really enjoyed how their mom, a nurse, always wanted them to use the correct medical terms when talking (a particularly funny sequence with a punchline involving rectum was a highlight). Or when Jon spent his hard-earned $1.25 on a set of 100 army men sold from the back of the comic book (hint: they were really really really small). And of course, there is lots of fun about how no one can pronounce his name (it’s Chess-kuh, obviously).
Our kids even took some lasting moments form the book (like that picking up dog poo is the worst job on the job chart) and the quotable line “stop breathing my air!”). And we all laughed really hard at the way he explains that in a family of six boys, the first child’s scrapbook is chock full of every thing whereas #6 may not even have the child’s actual photo.
Perhaps the best story of them all is when Jon tells a joke in Catholic school. The joke itself is very old and not especially funny, but the set up and delivery is outstanding. We sat in the driveway waiting for him to get to the punchline. It was very satisfying.
So as mentioned, we listened to the audiobook. Scieszka is not the best audio book reader. It was enjoyable when you could hear him laughing at things that he had written, but his delivery was kind of slow and flat. Nevertheless, it really felt like he was remembering these stories and telling is funny memories. I noticed on Amazon that the book has lots of pictures (this happened with our beloved Brixton Brothers audio books too—the actual books had lots of great pictures in them). I don’t know that we missed a lot (it’s mostly family photos) but it’s a bit of a bummer.
What I especially liked about the book is that it was friendly for both of my kids (5 & 7). There’s one sequence in Catholic school where the kids are overheard cursing. The nuns ask everyone in class to list every swear word they knew. I panicked a bit at this, but Jon keeps it very clean with “hell” and “damn” being the worst of it. But the whole sequence is very funny and made us all laugh (you can double the list of swearwords just by adding “-head” to the end of other words). Well done, knucklehead, thanks for the memories.
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