By Jerry D. Dudek

[reprinted with permission from The Westlife, March 8, 2000]

"Always Cheery, Never Weary, Author Brian Cleary --What is a Children's Book Writer?"

Based on the success of' his first series of books, Lakewood resident and Rocky River native Brian Cleary has released his second in a set of five books that will help second-through fourth-graders better understand the basic parts of the English language.
Using creative verse, Cleary, describes nouns in "A Mink, A Fink, A Skating Rink: What Is a Noun?"; adjectives in his most-recent children's book, "Hairy, Scary, Ordinary: What Is an Adjective?"; and he plans to take on verbs, prepositions and adverbs in three more 32-page books pub-lished by Carolrhoda Books, a division of Lerner Publishing Group.

In less than six years, Cleary will have penned nine books---pretty good for a guy who got rejections from nearly two dozen publishers when trying to get his first book, "Jamaica Sandwich?", into print.

"I got so many rejection slips that our mail carrier got a hernia," Cleary said. "Then I went from having no books pub-lished to having seven accepted in the course of four months."

The 40-year-old, self-proclaimed "punny man" has made a living out of turning a phrase. As a senior editor in the creative division of American Greetings in Cleveland (humorous cards, of course), as a lecturer for school teachers and educators, and as a children's book author, Cleary has proven that he is as quick with his pen as he is with his puns.

His newest set of books differs slightly from his first series, which catered to middle school-aged children and were pun-orient-ed. Although he uses the same Dr. Seussian poetic style in all of his books, this latest set helps children understand, in a humorous way, how words fall into different cate-gories.

Adjectives are words like hairy,
Scary, cool and ordinary.
They describe, like tan and tall,
Funny, frisky, smooth, and small.

They tell us things are orange or ,green,
Hot or cold or in-between,
Leaky, squeaky, ancient, new.
Easy, breezy, broken, blue.

A total of 13 similar singsong, rhyming verses comprise the adjective book, and the other "\'Chat Is' books are written in similar formats. The books are illustrated by Jenya Prosmitsky, ail artist who grew up m Moldova and currently re>ides m Minneapolis. Although they have been in contact numerous times, Cleary has never met Prosmitsky in person. Rick DuPrea illustrated Cleary's first four books.

The illustrations are eye-catching, but the success of the books are in verse. Clean' firmly believes that children can learn easier when it is fun, or when they have a tool to help them remember more easily. His "What Is" books are exactly that. Humor, he said, usually has a positive effect on children.

"Learning through humor is a fun way to teach and a fun way to learn, but the real reason I wrote a series of funny books is sim-ple: I'm a funny guy," Clears' wrote in an article titled "Rhyme and Pun-ishment: The Funny Business of Humor Writing."
"I spent so many years in elementary school, I had my own parking space. As an adult, I've proven to be horrible at home repair, bad at baseball, crummy at cooking, and lousy at landscaping. I don't have an MBA, CPA or Ph.D...I'm just a guy with the IQ of a BLT who barely knows his ABCs, and is full of BS on topics from A to Z," he said.

But Cleary is being overly modest. His book "Give Me Bach My, Schubert", one of the first four he wrote around puns and word-play, won a Children's Choice Award for being one of the top 100 books of the year as chosen by children. His other books in the series included "Jamaica Sandwich", "You Never Sausage Love", and "It Looks A Lot Like Reindeer". Cleary has also created hundreds of gags for comic strips such as Ziggy and Garfield.

Besides his work with children's publica-tions, Cleary is the publisher of the Home Improvement Directories, which are typi-cally available in hardware stores and paint shops in 36 greater Cleveland suburbs.

Cleary admits that his second series of books is less sophisticated than the first set, but only because the books are written for a younger audience. If he were to do it all over again, Cleary, said he probably would have written the "What Is" series first, which would have led youthful readers into the word-play series.

He and his wife Colleen have three daughters. Grace, the oldest, was about to enter sixth grade at the time of the word-play series publication, so Cleary was tuned into that age group at the time. Grace is now 14, sister Ellen is 12 and Emma, the youngest, is 8.
While his children may have been the inspiration for much of his writing, being able to help "reluctant students" to learn motivated him to write the books.

"There are lots of different ways to learn, but schools oftentimes allow just one or two ways to be smart," Cleary said. "But the more enjoyable something is, the more time you will spend with it. [ use little devices, like jump row cadence, and phrases people can remember. If children remember the phrase, they know the lesson.

"Kids enjoy laughing and are seldom bored when they find something funny. They also ask questions, often to adults, because they understand that the more they can comprehend about a funny story or a joke, the more they'll enjoy it."

Cleary was one of those "reluctant students" who "didn't get it" until humor became the hook that captured his atten-tion. He said he gets personal satisfaction from knowing that his writing is helping young people learn.

The ever-cheery Brian Cleary rarely gets too weary when writing his books. Cleary said he spends an hour or so each day for about two weeks comprising his 13-stanza poems, and then spends more time rewriting, editing and, in some cases, re-titling his work.

Cleary's book on verbs was originally titled "Rooting, Tooting, Parachuting: What Is a Verb?", but his editor point-ed out that title words rooting, tooting and parachuting aren't exactly verbs---they're gerunds. So to be grammatically correct, the book's title was changed. Since some words can't be easily illustrated, substituting a word may mean rewriting an entire verse.

The children's books have graphics to help tile reader. For instance, in the book on adjectives, each adjective appears in color, while the other words in the book appear in black.

Although he won't be writing any more books on the English language, Cleary still plans on writing more children's books.
"I don't think it will be chapter books, but I'm pitching an idea for some books on history," he said.

Cleary will continue with his job at American Greetings (he's been there more than l 7 years) and travel the country promoting his books and speaking at seminars. And while he does that, Cleary will be thinking of more ways to help children learn and enjoy life.