'2000 Year Old Man' for Kids

by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 9/27/2004

The 2000 Year Old Man was a classic comic creation by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, conceived in the long-ago days of the old Sid Caesar TV show and active in many formats since. Now his reach has been extended to the world of children, as the authors have signed to do a book called The 2000 Year Old Man Goes to School for HarperCollins Children's Books. Editor-in-chief Kate Morgan Jackson signed the deal with packager-producer Byron Preiss Visual Publications, which will produce it for the publisher. James Bennett, who illustrated Reiner's recent Tell Me a Scary Story, will do the pictures, and the book will feature the ancient hero, in a question-and-answer session with schoolchildren, telling them what it was like to be a kid way back when—you had to build a home to do your homework in, for instance. The book will be published next spring.