B.J. Novak proves to both parents and kids that books without pictures don’t have to be boring. Watch the hilarious video of Novak reading his new children’s book to a room full of kids. Though his book doesn’t have pictures, it doesn’t stop the book from bringing the kids to a roaring laughter.
Novak discusses how be came up with the idea for the book in a recent Vanity Fair interview. Novak says that he loves getting children to laugh because a child’s laugh is genuine. They don’t courtesy laugh; either it is funny or it isn’t.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than getting a laugh from a kid, because there’s no such thing as polite laughter, or social laughter.”
The notion behind for The Book With No Pictures is that words can be a child’s ally.
“There’s a really exciting way to show kids that the written word can be their ally and that it’s possible to do something extremely powerful—which is overpower an adult and your experience with them, using only words. Words that can be on your side. And I thought there was a beautiful, exciting lesson in that, in making words something—which they are, rebellious and a form of freedom—that a kid can learn is on their side whenever they want it to be.”
The premise of the book is that when an adult is reading a book to a child, they have to read every single word that is written on the page whether they like it or not. That means sometimes adults have to say funny things or silly words. Novak took that idea and ran with it for his hysterical children’s book that is whisking kids away in the hilarious story of a book of words that hold’s the parent hostage to its silly nature.
What do you think of BJ Novak’s idea ? Do you think The Book With No Pictures is as brilliant as I do?