Liralyn
March 2, 2019
Lizards?
Good day, most exalted Mr. Pinkwater!
I want to tell you that I read Lizard Music when I was in the Fifth Grade as a way to learn about foreshadowing and how to make predictions, specifically how to cope with one’s predictions being wrong. It has been roughly 10 years or so, and Lizard Music is still one of my favorite books. Yea, the only reason I refrain from asserting that it is my very favorite book is because I am bad at picking just one thing at a time.
Thank you for writing the book!
I do have one question, though: how did you decide on lizards? It seems to me that you could have had music-playing capybaras, or perhaps frogs, or really any strange and wonderful creature… What were the factors under consideration?
Daniel replies:
As a matter of fact, Lizard Music is/was my own favorite book for quite a long while. It was the first novel sort of thing I wrote, and at the time I had no reason to think I'd ever be given another chance to write something that would be published. I was given lots more chances, and wrote a number of things, and learned stuff every time. Just about none of the books were bad, but not one struck me as having turned out as good as Lizard Music...99 books, more or less...just about all of them were ok, but I was pretty sure not as good as. Then, number 100, The Neddiad, and I like it as much as Lizard Music! As to your actual question, it had to be lizards. Lizards can skitter. Capybara's do not skitter. The very idea!
