Chaya Coppersmith

October 20, 1999

Dear Mr. Pinkwater:

I really like your books. When I was little, The Big Orange Splot was my favorite book. I also read Fat Men from Space. Now I am in 5th grade and I had to read a science fiction book for my class and do a book report. I read Borgel. I liked it alot. My teacher wants us to make a travel brochure to show the setting of the book. I am going to make a brochure to travel through time, space and the other on the Interstate. I am going to show the root beer stand, the Blue Moon Cafe, etc. and show the kinds of creatures you might meet, Grivnizoids, Fleshopods, apes, etc. I would like to include a picture of you and say a traveler might even meet you. I could put some of your biography in that way. Can you post a picture? Thank you very much.

Chaya Coppersmith, P.S. 45, Staten Island, NY

Oops! After I wrote my request for a photo I found the photo gallery. So now I have a picture for my brochure. But I thought of another question:

where is your favorite place in time, space and the other?

Chaya –

P.S. I read about your horse. Trotolope is the gait my 23 year old pony uses when she is too lazy to canter.

mbrown

October 20, 1999

Get someone to re-print The Wuggie Norple Story!

Sebbo

October 20, 1999

Mr. P.:

T(so)ODPW = The (sort-of) Official Daniel Pinkwater Website, of course.

In response to your assertion that only one book was sold for the 20 of us who enjoyed Young Adult Novel, you should remember that all of us who loved it will now have to go out and buy the sequels at…um… used…um…bookstores….Hm. I see your point.

Yours, as ever,

Sebbo

E. S. Weiss

October 20, 1999

DP,

What’s your take on this Harry Potter fellow everyone’s raving about? Will we be seeing anything in the near future about a confrontation between Alan Mendelsohn and Harry? That would be interesting..

Ed

Ron Landsman

October 19, 1999

Dear Mr. Pinkwater,

I have just found this website and am somewhat at a loss for words, but wanted to say hello anyway. My daughter Lizzie, 12, 7th grade, and I are immense fans of yours and “Fishwhistle” specially. She does a great Pinkwater-as-Pakistani “He was daft,” throwing us both into fits of laughter to my wife’s utter consternation.

The point: Do you have any other cassette collections of nonfiction commentary like that? A collection of NPR numbers? Your anxious fans wait with bated breath.

Ron Landsman

PS, Your father may have spoken no known language, but your accent imitating him throws me into reveries of voices I must have heard as a child. It is music … Keep up the good work.

Lizzie Landsman

October 19, 1999

Mr. Pinkwater:

You know that e-mail you got (i hope) from the guy who said his little girl could do a good imitation of Hassan’s famous joke? That would be me.

Is there any way i can call you or something to show you the imitation?

thees computer ees daft!

Sebbo

October 19, 1999

O Mighty Pinkwater!

It seems a shame to ask such a banal question in this forum, but I couldn’t find anywhere else on the website that seemed more appropriate.

I’ve heard rumors of a sequel to Young Adult Novel. Sources variously give the titles Young Adult Sequel, and Young Adults. Neither, however, is listed in the pretty-darn-comprehensive bibliography here at T(so)ODPW. Does such a book exist? What’s it called? Is it in print? Why not?

This anecdote might interest you: At at retreat with some friends last weekend, I was in a room with about 20 people doing about 30 different noisy things on Saturday night. I started reading YAN to my girlfriend. By the end of the book, five people had taken turns reading alout, and the entire room was gathered listening to the story. For the next day, people were passing around the book, reading the chapters they had missed at the beginning.

Yours,

Sebbo

P.S. I read your interview in Fat?So! In it, you use the word “dysfunctional.

You owe me ten cents.

Robert Warren

October 17, 1999

Dear Mr. Pinkwater, I think my English teacher has pronounced some kind of a vendetta against you. She gave me a really horrible time about writing about you for my biography, and now she thinks that I am an anti-communist-gay-hating-jerk. You see, I used a few quotes from Robert Nifkin (namely the part about Robert’s homeroom teacher calling him either a “commie” or a “fairy”), except I sort of forgot to put the quotes in quotation marks. As you can imagine her brother is gay and her father was black listed for tolerating communism. Now I might as well be roasted at the stake with a big “F” written on my forehead. But you know what, I’m happy I did my report on you.

Lydia Miliokas

October 17, 1999

Mr. Pinkwater: Help!! I have a project to do for school and I need to know these things about you right away: 1. How long did it take you to write the Hoboken Chicken Emergency?? and 1. How would you describe yourself (2 things)?? I loved the book, by the way. I am in Grade 4 and we are studying it at school. We even get to dress up like

chickens!!

Thanks, Lydia Miliokas, age 9

Some curious 4th graders

October 13, 1999

Dear Daniel,

Greetings from Mr. Cornell’s 4th graders at the Dhahran Hills School in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Recently, we read in our Silver/Burdett/Ginn reading series a selection from The Hoboken Chicken Emergency entitled “Arthur’s Thanksgiving Emergency” and “Lee Bennett Hopkins Interviews Daniel Manus Pinkwater.”

Both were a lot of fun to read. After reading Lee Bennett Hopkins’ interview, which was very informative, we still have a few questions we’d like to ask you.

-How old were you when you had your first book published?
-Do you remember the first story you wrote as a child? If so, what was it about?
-Do you and your wife still own the three Icelandic horses? What are their names?
-Do you ever get ideas for writing from your pets?

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. We think it’s cool that you have your own web site.

Ma’asalamaa,

Some curious 4th graders

Jan Gleiter

October 13, 1999

Ah, Mr. Pinkwater . . . you are a genius. I adore you. I started to adore you with “The Big Orange Splot.” I had to read it seven thousand times to each of my children as he or she got old enough to refrain from spitting up on the pages. Luckily, that occurred before each was sent off to school, so there was plenty of time for reading and looking at all the fabulously redone homes. We all wanted to live on the Neat Street.

Anyway, my current book is “Fish Whistle.” (Yeah, I know, book titles go in ital. Too annoying, though, with e-mail.) I love “Fish Whistle.” I can’t figure out why your parents were letting you go to the Clark Theater at 2 in the morning night after night, but it’s none of my business . . .

A friend of mine who shares my besotted feelings for you was excited to hear that you live in Duchess County. She lives in Kingston but hasn’t lived there long and is still reeling from the . . . uh . . . culture of the place. I quoted your comments about native residents and workmen. The comments only confirmed her belief that you are, indeed, as clever and funny and wonderful as she has always thought. (She’s the one who started my kids on “The Big Orange Splot.”)

I want you to read one of my books. There are only two. They are both mysteries. Do you ever read mysteries? If so (or if Jill does), let me know and I will send you one. I promise that they are not gross.

I told Susan Sussman, who knows you PERSONALLY, to tell you that I adore you. I don’t know if she did. I don’t actually know Susan, but we were talking on the phone because she got stuck with doing some interview stuff for some local group of writers and so she interviewed me. She’s nice. I can’t remember how I found out that she knows you. Maybe it was by asking the question I ask everyone I ever come in contact with: “Do you by any chance know Daniel Pinkwater?”

By the time I moved to Chicago, the Clark Theater had already become a place where nice people didn’t go. I don’t mean “nice” people. I mean nice people. So I never went.

Ta!

Jan Gleiter

Brad Sondahl

October 12, 1999

In your typical enigmatic way, by your reply I can’t tell whether you really wrote a third Snark Book (I snarked with a Zombie) or not. If not, you should consider it, and the title isn’t bad, either. As J.R.R. Tolkien might have said, two books is two books, but a trilogy is a boxed set…

Middles Green

October 12, 1999

If you are too chicken to visit our 8 foot tall 266 pound Heneretta.

Would you consider:

A. A photo of your self.
B. A drawing of Heneretta.
C. A drawing of your self as Heneretta.

Please send drawings to 71 Montague City Road,
Greenfield Mass 01301

Greenfield Center School.

Thank you for all the help!

Gail Weiser

October 11, 1999

Dear Mr. Pinkwater,

Each year I read THE HOBOKEN CHICKEN EMERGENCY to my fourth grade class. It takes the place of their formal text book reading lessons for five days. They take notes and do short comprehension checks each day. They also learn about commas in a series, proper nouns, adjectives, quotation marks and math word problems in lessons based on the story. The music teacher teaches them the Chicken Dance and to sing chicken songs. The art teacher does Polish paper cuttings of scenes from the book. This all takes place in five days. We then have an actual test on the book. This year everyone passed!! Then, we have our Chicken Day Celebration. We see the movie, which is delightful ,and we eat loads of “CHICKEN FOOD”. The kids volunteer to create a menu of snacks based on the book. We have had deviled eggs, hard boiled eggs, fried wings, bug juice, cupcakes with a gummy worm coming out of the top, chicken beaks (candy corn), chicken feed (pop corn and sunflower seeds), Henrietta’s potato chips, ants on a log (celery stuffed with peanut butter and garnished with raisins), bacon and eggs (pretzel sticks topped with a white chocolate circle and a yellow M&M), jelly eggs, and plates, napkins, and cups with chickens and the word CLUCK hand painted on them. The kids bring their rubber and stuffed chickens and I wear my chicken earrings. This year the cafeteria menu also listed Fried Chicken on the Chicken Celebration Day. The kids were very impressed! We also read you interview in our reading book, and we all agreed that you are pretty weird ,and you are certainly not boring !All the kids said that they would like you for a friend because you would make them laugh a lot!!!!

THANK YOU, MR.PINKWATER, FOR HELPING TO TURN MY STUDENTS ON TO READING!!!

Ms. Gail Weiser, Fourth Grade Teacher at Mannington Township School in Salem, NJ

p.s. If you ever come across the Delaware Memorial Bridge and have an hour to spare, come say hello. We are a tiny school of only 200 kids in this farming area of Salem County. There is one fourth grade, with only 11 kids this year. We are the room at the end of the hall with the feet hanging over the door. You would love our country air, and you can see wild turkeys, bald eagles, lots of deer, and swans in our Mannington Meadows. A wild turkey hatched 14 eggs right next to the kindergarten fence last spring. We called her Zena because she never left her nest ,even when the farmer plowed 3 feet away or the students peered down into her nest from over the fence. She carried her babies on her back when they were tiny ,and later led them all around the playground. This summer when the doors of the school were left open to let in some air, she led her babies in and down the hallway causing quite a mess! So you see, we live in a pretty wild place. It would have been a good place to Henrietta. Remember, you are welcome any time.

Jon Feldman

October 10, 1999

Dear Mr. Pinkwater,

How do I go about getting permission to adapt Lizard Music to a screenplay?

Do I need to contact your agent/manager, or do you handle such inquiries?

Sincerely,

Jon Feldman