Guys Read #1: Funny Business Edited by Jon Scieszka

This book is a collection of humorous stories, written by well-known authors, and I gave it a rating of four out of five. Authors such as Jack Gantos, Eoin Coffer, David Lubar, and Christopher Paul Curtis contributed stories to this book. The stories start off sounding almost like memoirs, realistic narratives about the author's lives. Most of them stay realistic fiction, but there are some moments of fantasy/science fiction. The topics range from a wacky friend with the idea of wrapping the author in adhesive bandages like a mummy, to brothers pranking each other, to aliens being defeated with the power of broccoli, to a crotchety grandfather with a long stick for whacking the kids.

I enjoyed the chapter about a boy writing letters back and forth with an author to complete a school assignment. As a teacher, I could identify with both characters, especially the boy who just wanted to get the assignment over with. The chapter about the turkey was a bit strange. The father bought a turkey to help make his son more manly, but the boy was convinced that the turkey wanted to kill him. The boy ending up out-"foxing" the turkey.