Josh Gad with his wife and two daughters
Amazon Kindle Kids and actor Josh Gad (Frozen, The Book of Mormon) have officially joined forces to encourage children to read more over summer vacation with the “Backseat Book Crew” initiative.
“If there’s one thing that I love my kids doing more than anything else, it’s reading,” Gad tells me over Zoom. “It’s something that has been so important to me, being a published author now, that happens because of an appreciation for literature. My passion for literature probably started around my kids’ age. So around 14 is when I actually started falling in love with reading, as opposed to dreading it, because it was mostly an assignment. To their credit, my kids [actually] found delight in reading at a far younger age. I used to read them the Harry Potter books. We would do it as a family, I would do all the voices, and I think they just found that so joyful.”
While open to everyone, the virtual book club (which you can learn more about here) should appeal greatly to families planning to travel over break, especially if those families have kids making their way through several titles at once.
“My girls like to read five to six books at a time. I don’t know how they do it,” the actor says. “But that can be a pain in the butt when you’re traveling, because you want to limit the amount of luggage you’re taking. The fact that my kids have their own version of a Kindle, a Kindle Kids, [means]
they can literally download as many books as possible … It was so appealing to my wife and I because as I keep joking, this is the kind of screen time I can get behind. On average, a kid who reads off of Kindle Kids will read at least an hour a day. If you’re a parent, that is exactly what the goal is. That’s what you want. Thankfully, I don’t need to push my kids.”
Gad, who has several excursions planned for the summer — including a journey overseas and trips to national parks across Canada and the United States — knows his kids are just as grateful for their e-readers as he is. “[They] get really annoyed being in a car with me for long periods of time. I’m like Clark Griswold when I travel,” he adds with a smile, comparing himself to Chevy Chase’s iconic character from the National Lampoon’s Vacation film series. “I love to annoy them. I love to point out sites. I love to just go early and go hard. And so, having a device like this [as well as] headphones allows them to tune me out, which I’m sure gives them a lot of joy and pleasure.”
In addition to packing efficiently, embracing the unexpected, and assigning snack duty, one of Gad’s golden travel rules is “make the back seat fun for kids,” he reveals. “In this case, giving them a Kindle is really fun for them. It also gives them an education.
“And then my type of travel, unfortunately, when we’re done with the vacation, I want everyone to feel like they need a vacation. That’s how much we do, that’s how hard we work. I love museums. I love history. We’re going to Malta next week and I plan on taking them to all sorts of different old buildings that they’re going to dread. But I hope that one day they come to appreciate the experience and knowledge that comes with those kinds of trips.”
Over the last year, Gad has openly explored a great deal of his own personal history with In Gad We Trust (a memoir-adjacent collection of essays) and Dark Horse’s limited comic series, The Writer (all issues are now available in trade paperback form). Created alongside the Berkowitz Brothers, Ben and Max, the latter — an effervescent cocktail of an adventure that incorporates and remixes Jewish tradition, mysticism, and folklore — served as an ode to Gad’s background as the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.
“It’s amazing how many myths and how much mythology has had its day — not only in literature writ large, but specifically in the annals of comic books and graphic novels,” he says. “And yet somehow, outside of a very few exceptions (I think Raiders of Lost Ark is probably the the best example) Jewish and, in particular, Old Testament mythology, is something that hasn’t really been tapped into. When the Berkowitz Brothers presented me with that opportunity, I immediately said yes. So many of the great, influential writers in this industry were Jewish. And so, not only getting to create an homage to them, but also tackle a subject matter that allows it to be front and center has been really exciting. It’s been incredibly thrilling to watch people not only consume this as entertainment, but also appreciate the knowledge element of it and be like, ‘How have I never heard these stories? Why do I not know about this?’”
Josh Gad’s daughters
When it comes to his own reading preferences, “there isn’t a genre that I won’t tap into as long as it’s interesting in some way, shape or form,” Gad shares. One of his recent favorites was Percival Everett’s James, an acclaimed retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim. “I’m actually having my kids read some books by Mark Twain on their Kindle Kids this summer, because I shockingly realized that it was a glaring omission from their lexicon of books. I was like, ‘Oh no, you guys need to Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer!’ I’ll probably revisit those books again.”
Given that one of his daughters “is obsessed with Greek mythology,” Gad is also revisiting Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Circe — “two of my favorite books ever” — to see if they’re appropriate for younger readers. “We may actually pop open The Odyssey before the Nolan movie comes out,” he adds.
Then comes the mea culpa. “This is going to appall a lot of people that I’ve never read this before,” he says before admitting that he only just got through Stephen King’s 11/22/63, a richly-detailed thriller about an English teacher who goes back in time to try and prevent the JFK assassination from taking place. “I love a good time travel book and I don’t know how I missed this,” finishes Gad. “I’ve read a lot of early Stephen King and there are some glaring things on the later end that I haven’t read.”
Those who sign up for the Kindle Kids Backseat Book Crew will receive a number of reading-themed stickers, a “Kindle Kid On Board” bumper sticker, a sew-on patch, a number of reading recommendations for the summer, and a a 10% off promo code for their next Kindle Kids or Kindle Paperwhite Kids purchase through Amazon.
