By Chuck Cascio, Author and Former South Lakes Teacher

As a student at Hunters Woods Elementary School, Ethan Berlin had a problem: “I
kept getting in trouble for making jokes in class.” That “problem” has become Ethan’s
trademark characteristic in a career of “making funny things because that is what fulfills
me.”
In fifth grade, Ethan transferred to the Gifted & Talented program at Sunrise Valley
Elementary School where “my teacher, Mr. Bromley, was both funny and emotionally
supportive. He made me realize it was not only okay to be weird and funny, but it was
also an important part of being a person. Those experiences validated and grew what was
already inside me.”
Living in the Deepwood Community within Reston, “there were so many kids, there
was always someone to joke with!” Ethan spent summers at the Reston Community
Center’s Young Actors Theater “where I continued my love of performing and comedy.”
That affection developed further at South Lakes High School: “I took Theater Arts with
Ms. Harris and Film Production with Ms. Belt.”
Ethan graduated from SLHS in 1995, and went to the University of Virginia, but he
says, “I never quite found my community there. Things I valued – creativity, silliness,
compassion, humor – were not valued by many of my peers.” Spending his junior year at
Ireland’s Burren College of Art, he “found a collective of fellow artists and weirdos! I’m
pretty sure I wouldn’t have finished college without that experience.”
After graduating from UVA, Ethan plunged into a creative journey. He worked the
Jumbotron at Capital Center, then moved to Los Angeles and “achieved my dream of first
becoming an overworked TV assistant, writing for TV shows, and eventually being
nominated for some Emmy Awards.” He eventually moved to New York and continued
working on TV while cultivating his pursuit of children’s humor. Then a critical event
occurred: “I made a funny iPhone calculator app and showed it to another parent at a
kids’ party. She thought the app was funny and said she was a children’s book editor, and
asked if I had ever thought about writing for kids.”
Ethan grabbed the opportunity to pursue a lifelong goal of making kids laugh: “I sent
her several manuscripts for children’s picture books. She ended up buying ‘The Hugely-
Wugely Spider,’ about a spider that is too big to fit up the waterspout with the Itsy-Bitsy
Spider. I was always the biggest kid in class, so I wanted to write a story about a big
character who ends up saving the day.”
Since then, Ethan, who has two children and now lives in New Jersey, has had six
children’s books published, the latest being “How to Draw a Brave Chicken” that “starts as
a typical how-to-draw book and then goes off the rails! My fifth-grade self would
definitely have found it amusing.” That same natural humor led Ethan to create the
children’s monthly magazine, The Journal of Nonsense: The Funny Magazine for Silly
Kids, which is filled with “ridiculous activities, weird jokes, absurd games, and the
occasional picture of hippopotamuses” and more.
As Ethan reflects on his love of humor, he admits, “It has long-felt that making funny
things is the only thing there is; it is the language I speak and just feels like what I am
supposed to do.”
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