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Interviewed by Teen Success Expert Justin Sachs
By charles | May 8, 2009
Here’s a blog interview I did for my book The Laugh Out Loud Guide: Ace the SAT Exam without Boring Yourself to Sleep! (cut for length). The interviewer is Justin Sachs, who is a Teen Success Expert.
Interview with Charles Horn
Friday, May 8, 2009
Charles Horn is the author of the new book, The Laugh Out Loud Guide: Ace the SAT Exam without Boring Yourself to Sleep!, which uses comedy to prepare students for the dreaded SAT. Charles is an Emmy-nominated comedy writer and a Princeton PhD.
1. What do you do?
I am a comedy writer based in Los Angeles. My credits include Robot Chicken, Robot Chicken: Star Wars, and freelance jokes for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
2. Tell us about your new book.
The Laugh Out Loud Guide: Ace the SAT Exam without Boring Yourself to Sleep! is a fun and effective SAT study guide that uses comedy to prepare students for the SAT. Sample questions include:
Yo Momma so _______, when you mail her a letter, you need two zip codes.
(A) diaphanous
(B) luminous
(C) ravenous
(D) grisly
(E) corpulent
At a Saks Fifth Avenue store, Winona Ryder examines four distinct blouses, five distinct dresses, and two distinct handbags. How many different combinations of items can she shoplift if she takes exactly one blouse, two dresses, and a handbag?
A couple of quotes regarding the book include:
“Anyone with kids about to enter the collegiate system needs to buy this for their children.”
–Curled Up With A Good Book [Book Review]
“SAT prep books don’t work if students don’t read them. A professional comedy writer and PhD wrote this book to hold students’ interest, and students will eagerly read it.”
–James Rosenbaum, professor of education, Northwestern University
3. Why did you write it?
I often tutor in between writing gigs and whenever I tutor for the SAT I invariably see either a boredom factor or a stress factor come into play. If students are bored, they won’t put in the effort, and if they’re too stressed, their learning ability becomes impaired. Comedy helps in both regards, because it reduces stress and keeps students interested and engaged. The other remarkable thing about comedy is that it actually increases recall, so students will remember the information better on test day (and apply the same concepts to the more boring SAT questions).
Let’s face it, too often students are simply handed huge mind-numbingly boring textbooks that put them immediately to sleep, so they don’t even end up studying in the first place. If research shows that comedy is an effective teaching tool in many ways, then a comedic SAT study guide will be helpful and effective on multiple levels. I realized I was in a unique position to write such a book. I designed the guide so that it could be used to enhance all traditional forms of test prep. In other words, students can now laugh their way to a higher test score.
4. What makes you an expert in your field?
I have a Ph.D. from Princeton and a total of five degrees in engineering and mathematics. I was also nominated for an Emmy award for my writing on Robot Chicken.
5. What type of people should read your book?
Students studying for the SAT. Parents of students studying for the SAT. People who know students studying for the SAT. Adults will enjoy reading all of the comedic questions in the book as well, but the book wasn’t written explicitly for them and I imagine the word SAT would scare most of them off anyway. 
7. Advice for Teens or Parents of Teens
First, if you don’t have a ton of money to drop on classes and tutoring, don’t worry about it. Many students (including myself) have aced these kinds of standardized tests without going through expensive classes and tutoring. There are many good books out there and that’s all you need. And because books cost only $10 to $20 each, you can afford to buy a couple of them and still save hundreds and thousands of dollars in test prep costs. Buy The Official SAT Study Guide for its eight full practice tests and take a look at the other books to see which ones help you in the areas you need most. And of course buy The Laugh Out Loud Guide to give you that comedy edge. Review the material and then work through many practice tests until you’re happy with your score.
Second, if you are paying for classes or tutoring and a company tells you they have the “secrets” to “beat” the SAT, then run. Get as far away as possible from them. Don’t be taken in by satisfaction guarantees either. Most guarantees only provide more free classes that didn’t work for you the first time. Or they place many barriers in front of you to make sure they never have to give you any money back.
[...]
10. How can we purchase your book? Learn more about you? Do you have a blog?
The Laugh Out Loud Guide: Ace the SAT Exam without Boring Yourself to Sleep! (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $12.99) can be purchased at Barnes and Noble and other fine bookstores, and on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0740777106?ie=UTF8&tag=charhorn-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0740777106
The website for the book is located at http://www.laughoutloudguide.com.
You can also find my comics website and blog at http://www.yayrobot.com.
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