43
JJ Brothers bring their show to North Elementary
Photo
Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.North Elementary Principal Stephanie Mateja introduced the JJ Brothers before their show at the school's assembly.
Photo
Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.North Elementary School students and teachers enjoyed the JJ Brothers show, which used humor to promote literacy.
Photo
Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Jon (left) and his brother Jim Hixson have written three children's books and put on shows in schools using humor to promote literacy.
Photo
Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Jim Hixson of the JJ Brothers got their show started at North Elementary. The show was put on to promote literacy.
By TIM CLEVELAND
After the success of their children’s books “The Adventures of Caterpillar Jones” and “Caterpillar Jones and the Adventures of Nut E. Squirrel” in 2000 and 2002, respectively, brothers Jon and Jim Hixson began doing school assemblies eight years ago to bring their message of literacy to students.
They have since added a third book, “Dog Collars: K9 Unit Detective,” which has an anti-drug message and was published in 2010.
The approximately 45-minute shows use humor and characters to get the children more interested in reading and writing.
“We promote reading and writing through humor,” Jon Hixson said. “We do a little skit that shows ways for the kids to read more books and uses some of the basic writing techniques we use when we’re writing our books that the kids can apply to their writing.”
The brothers’ most recent presentation was on Nov. 10 at North Elementary School.
After an introduction by North Principal Stephanie Mateja, the brothers – both from Akron – got right into their show.
“We just had an idea for a book,” Jim said of the beginnings of the team. “We’ve always been writers all through high school and college. We just sat down and wrote a kids book and it took off. We used to use this to promote it. Now we just do it because it’s kind of fun.”
The brothers said they used to do a lot more shows, but have been doing fewer in recent years.
“At one point, we were up to 200 a year,” Jon said. “We’ve been doing school assemblies for the last eight years.”
Jim added that last year they did approximately 150 shows.
“We’re not doing as many this year,” he said. “We’re just kind of slowing it down.”
The brothers said one of the focuses of their show is to get children to use their imaginations more.
“Teaching them to read uses their imaginations, which the teachers always tell us is one of the hardest things to get kids to do is try and visualize the characters and stuff,” Jim said. “A lot of the chapter books have no pictures or very little pictures. We’re trying to get them to make their own pictures in their heads. That’ll help them with reading.”
“Nowadays everything’s out front,” Jon said. “With TV and everything, you don’t have to use your imagination.”