When it comes to kid's books, I'll read goofy and zany any day over uplifting. If it doesn’t bore me to death to read it 17,000 times a week, my daughter will probably like it too, I reason.

So I thought it was kind of awesome that Jon Scieszka, author of "The Stinky Cheese Man'  and "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs,"  has been named the first "children's laureate" by the Library of Congress Center  for the Book and the Children's Book Council.

Scieszka, whose official title is National Ambassador for Young People' Literature, is a big believer in the power of funny to get kids to read.  He's also the founder of the Guys Read initiative, which aims to get boys to love literature. When you think about it, a lot of the classics of children's lit are aimed at girls – the Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prarie books and almost the entire ouvre of Judy Blume, just for starters.

"Humor is essential," he told Newsweek. "When I was teaching second grade, if they were going to get a laugh out of something, they'd read it. The Children's Book Council and the Library of Congress wanted to change our image of kids' books being staid and calm and sweet!"

He started out as an elementary school teacher, which will give you the survival skills to engage kids if it doesn’t kill you, and also tested out his stories on his two now-grown kids. And he says he learned to write funny by just reading stuff that makes him laugh. Awesomely, one of the people he hangs out with is Mo Willems, author of such brilliance as "Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus." Now there's a daddy date I'd pay to crash.