Winkler scores big with little fans
Kids book series on dyslexia is personal.
Henry Winkler won millions of fans playing “Happy Days” biker Fonzie and reaches new ones as “Barry” acting coach Gene Cousineau, but the most meaningful contacts he’s had have been on a smaller, more personal level, through his books about Hank Zipzer, a boy with dyslexia.
“First of all, the children write to me and say, ‘How did you know me so well?’” says Winkler, who faced learning difficulties in school and didn’t realize he had the learning disability until he was 31. In writing the books, “It is very easy for me to become the 8-year-old who is failing at everything, so the emotions are true.”
Winkler, who coauthors the best-selling books with Lin Oliver, has reached many people, young and old, with dyslexia and not, via readings from the book series about Hank, who attends Winkler’s own elementary school, Manhattan’s PS 87.
At the Screen Actors Guild Awards, he was surprised by a young man who remembered a Winkler reading from his own childhood: SAG and Oscar nominee Timothee Chalamet (“Call Me by Your Name,” “Beautiful Boy”).
“We met for the first time, and I said, ‘You are so purely, truly talented, I have to give you a hug.’ And he said, ‘You went to PS 87.’ I said, ‘Yes, I did. That’s where Hank Zipzer goes to school.’ He said, ‘So did I. And when I was 8 years old, you came and read ‘Hank Zipzer’ to us,’” says Winkler, who joins Chalamet in the cast of the upcoming film “The French Dispatch.” “Talk about a circle. Oh my God! I was thrilled.”
Winkler met Chalamet just before publication of his latest Hank Zipzer book, which has an easy-to-read font designed especially for dyslexic readers. “Here’s Hank: Everybody Is Somebody,” the 12th and final book in a prequel series about the second-grader before his diagnosis, coincidentally focuses on the story of a well-known author of a beloved book series who visits Hank’s school.
Winkler and Oliver have written 29 Hank Zipzer books, including 17 in the original “Hank Zipzer: The World’s Greatest Underachiever” series, which follows Hank from the fourth through sixth grades and focuses on “a kid who doesn’t try to be funny, but somehow always manages to make the other kids laugh,” according to the publisher’s description.
With the Hank books completed, Winkler says he and Oliver are working on new children’s books with a new
character, though he said it’s too soon to provide details.
“Outside of my children and grandchildren, my family, I am the proudest of the books, bar none,” says Winkler, back for Season 2 of HBO’s “Barry” (Sunday, 10 p.m. EDT/PDT).
For someone who still faces challenges reading a book — “You never get over your dyslexia, you only learn to negotiate it” — Winkler was taken aback when he met with national booksellers upon publication of the first book in 2003.
“I looked down, and there was my name on this novel. And I literally stopped talking. I forgot where I was,” he says. “I was just amazed.”
Winkler, a graduate of Emerson College and Yale School of Drama, diverges from his alter ego in at least one respect: Hank is diagnosed with dyslexia in the fourth grade, while Winkler didn’t learn he had it until years later.
In school, “I failed at everything except for lunch,” and his parents, unlike Hank’s mother, didn’t understand. As in the books, Winkler had an understanding teacher who said, “‘If you ever do get out of here, you are going to be great.’ Everybody else said I would be a failure.”
The “Barry” Emmy winner finally realized he had dyslexia as an adult, when his stepson, Jed, was diagnosed with the condition after being tested in the third grade.
“And everything they said to him was true about me, and I thought, ‘Oh my God!’” Winkler says.
Winkler, who faced post-”Happy Days” typecasting, was having trouble finding roles when he started the Hank Zipzer books, but he’s been very busy in recent years, with supporting roles in “Arrested Development,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Royal Pains” and “Childrens Hospital,” in addition to his Emmy-winning turn on “Barry.”
“Every one of my children” was diagnosed with dyslexia, which has a hereditary connection, and all thrived, he says, citing their successful careers in film directing, teaching and business.
Their success — and his — point to a larger lesson: Dyslexia “does not limit you. It only forces you to come up with another solution.”
And although the Chalamet conversation carried special significance coming from a fellow actor, Winkler says he is moved by many encounters with “Hank Zipzer” readers, some of whom are now young adults.
He remembers a hotel bellman who “ran out from behind the desk — he’s about 6 feet tall and 24 years old — and he said, ‘You got me through school. I read every one of your books.’ Young children come up and go, ‘I read your books in school. They make me laugh.’ It’s like getting an amazing compliment for ‘Barry.’”
Such a broad response reflects a universal message that speaks to everyone, not just those who have dyslexia, Winkler says: “There is greatness inside every child and their job is to figure out what that is, dig it out and give it to the world.”