Bwog editor emerita Sara Vogel bumped into Jon Scieszka, one of her childhood heroes, on 112th street and Broadway a few weeks ago. When she found out that the author of The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales, Math Curse, and the Time Warp Trio series got his Master's at Columbia in the late 70's, she took down his number, and followed up. He's planning a new series about trucks and books about a cowboy and an octopus, and he's on the board of 826NYC — for all of you non-McSweeneyites, the tutoring center disguised as the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. Here Scieszka muses about kindergarteners, coming up with Borat way before Sasha Cohen, and why he's second best to Roald Dahl.

So sorry I accosted you on the street the other day.

No, I thought that was kind of funny.

Does that happen to you a lot, where you get people recognizing you and stopping you on the street?

Not so much. But I was out in Arizona on a book tour and one little guy asked me if I had security. Like he was wondering if I had a body guard or something. I said, "No, most people don't even know what I look like." Except there's this whole little crew of kindergarteners that I was working with last year that will wave to me on the street and go, "Hi Jon Scieszka." And their parents will go, "Who was that guy? Who are you talking to?"

Why were you working with kindergarteners?

I'm actually working on this pre-school project where I've thought up this whole world called 'Trucktown' where all the characters are trucks. I definitely needed to get into the classroom to see what four-year-olds are like.

What'd you learn?

Mostly that kindergarteners are like little guys with Alzheimer's on acid. They are nuts, man. It's like the world is completely reinvented for them every fifteen minutes. Any kind of parody or satire, which is what I really enjoy writing, just is way beyond them. Since the world is so brand new every fifteen minutes, you can't really make fun of it. They don't even know what the rules are for the regular world. We were in there for Saint Patrick's Day and the teacher was telling them, "Oh, well if you don't wear green, the Leprechaun is going to come around and pinch you" and immediately half the kids looked really worried. They thought "oh no, I don't have green on, I'm going to get pinched!"