zach
Post #2893 – 20120426April 26, 2012
i just read your book The Frankenbagel Monster and your humor is excelent.
Daniel replies:
But that book is supposed to be scary!
Talk to DP Forum
Kevin
Post #2894 – 20120426April 26, 2012
I will not comment about the New York State Pineapple Clothes test. I do want to thank you again for weblishing your new novel, _Bushman Lives_. I am enjoying the weekly chapters immensely! I also want to comment on the web site. The font and colors work to make the text easy to read, the images are always in place (and brilliantly illustrate the story), and the comment section always works. While these may sound like basic standards for a professional web site, you might be surprised at how many commercially run web sites do not live up to them. Congratulations and thanks to you and Webmaster Ed for a job stupendously well done!
(And you could probably cash in on the whole test fiasco by launching a line of produce clothing, starting with Pinkwater’s Patented Pineaple Sleeves).
Daniel replies:
Well this website is not professional or commercial. It has been Webmaster Ed's work of art all this time.
Tracy D.
Post #2895 – 20120426April 26, 2012
Dear Mr. Pinkwater:
I just want to say I absolutely love your work. You are a literary genius!!! My favorites are maybe the Snarkout Boys books or Borgel. Practically no one I know reads your books, but they all read the Hunger Games, which isn’t as good.
Wait, almost all of them read the Big Orange Splot which I think is part of the art curriculum at the local elementary school.
Anyway, I just want to say I really like your books and things.
P.S. You probably hear this all the time, but do you know where you can buy a book of your comic strip Norb? I think it’s really funny, but I could only find it in one place where it cost almost fifty bucks.
Daniel replies:
I have the best readers, not the most readers. I like it that way. Don't pay $50 for that NORB book! It's badly bound, and the pages tend to fall out. Sooner or later you'll come across a copy for $1.98. Thanks for your kind words.
Sally Sessler
Post #2823 – 20120425April 25, 2012
I love listening to you on NPR with Scott Simon on Saturdays. The best is when you both read one of your books. I now have a new granddaughter, now 15 months old. What book(s) would you recommend for me to get her at this age. There are so many. Is there a way to search on a web site for age appropriate titles. Thanks.
Daniel replies:
Why not visit a book store, or the children's room at a public library, and look at actual books?
Ellen
Post #2822 – 20120425April 25, 2012
Mr. Pinkwater, I am a parent of two teenagers and a public school teacher. We love(d) reading your books and listening to you on the radio. I teach high school history which makes your hilarious and absurd stories and books even more entertaining and useful! However, rather than just dodging this issue about the misuse of your story, why don’t you actually speak out about the misuse of our students, their brains and this ridiculous emphasis on testing? That would show real acountability and contrition. And remember think, in world of robo-taught students, there will be no audience (or time alotted) for laughter and joy in the classroom. Is this the future you want for our children?
Daniel replies:
I was interviewed by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Daily News. I answered all their questions, and clearly expressed my views about standardized tests. You can easily find those interviews by Googling. I also posted an account of my experience with the test-making company here on the main page, and another as a post in the forum you addressed with your post. What do you think I am dodging? Also, how does high school history make my books even more entertaining and useful? Thanks for your kind words, and comments.
Nathaniel Stephen Patrick Francisco Yamaha Roundas IV
Post #2821 – 20120424April 24, 2012
If a short man falls in love with a chicken, what should he do?
Daniel replies:
Candy corn is always a nice present. Good luck.
zach
Post #2820 – 20120423April 23, 2012
what was your favorite when you were young?
Daniel replies:
Vanilla.
Rochelle Abrantes
Post #2816 – 20120422April 22, 2012
About the pineapples that don’t have sleeves…
Maybe you should charge the powers that be more money because they obviously butchered your story — it has been adulterated enough that pineapples were sleeveless. Next time, don’t sell them anything and make them work at writing their own darn tests. One day, we hope that the people will figure out that these tests are oh-so-lame.
Daniel replies:
Thank you for yet another comment on this important, but I am bored with it, topic.
Christine
Post #2817 – 20120422April 22, 2012
I saw your photo in the NYTimes story about standardized tests using an edited form of your text to confuse young children. You were standing with a lovely dog. It looks a lot like mine. I am wondering what sort of dog it is. Mine’s just a German shepherd mix from a shelter in Leipzig.
Thanks for answering.
Daniel replies:
Kee is a Norwegian elkhound plus something else, maybe collie, from a kill-shelter in Atlanta, saved from death by a wonderful organization, perfectpetsrescue.org , transported to NY state where she was brought back to health, and ultimately adopted by lucky us.
| Before: | After: |
sama ayad alnassiry
Post #2819 – 20120422April 22, 2012
Hey Mr.Pinkwater……why did you sell out your story to New York State??!
At 8:30 on Monday hell broke loose, i mean they gave us children stories ( no offence) with college questions!!!
Daniel replies:
I don't know. Something came over me. I did a bad thing.
Crazy Fan
Post #2818 – 20120422April 22, 2012
I’m a huge fan, and I’ve gotta say (sorry, I know you’re bored with the topic but I have more than just this) that I’m impressed that you’re not entirely outraged at Pearson. Now, I may be in 8th grade, but I have some business advice! Work to get some publicity from this. Most of my friends who haven’t read your books, unlike me, don’t want to read them because they don’t know that you didn’t actually write “The Hare and the Pineapple.” I suggest that you reach out to my age group, maybe visit a couple of schools, and make yourself known as the creative author who DIDN’T write a stupid story for the test. If you respond and think it’s a good or at least semi-good idea, I’ll give you the name of a school to visit (Hint: it’s my school ).
By the way, my book club in fifth grade make a book all about The Neddiad.
THANK YOU FOR RESPONDING!!! I THINK IT’S WONDERFUL THAT AN FANTABULOUS AUTHOR IS TAKING THE TIME TO TALK TO HIS READERS!!!
Daniel replies:
Face facts. Most of your friends will never read my books. By the time you graduate from college, and get your first job, probably working for Pearson Publishing in Akron, Ohio, and I'm living in a third-hand trailer somewhere in New Jersey, the only thing anyone will remember about me is that I _did_ write the story about the hare and the pineapple. It's too late to do anything about it. I might visit a few schools, trying to get a job as a night watchman, but I don't hold out much hope--they'll know about the pineapple too. Thanks for trying to cheer me up.
Ron Lake
Post #2811 – 20120421April 21, 2012
As a regular reader of the Wall Street Journal, I must thank you for allowing them to interview you recently about the Hare/Pineapple Test Question. It is the first time I have ever laughed out loud reading the WSJ. In fact, I laughed out loud – heartily, and at length, too – not once but twice. So thank you, and thank you again.
Daniel replies:
You laughed? You laughed at a story about public monies wasted on poorly-made tests which are being used as a means of determining the futures of students, teachers, even whole schools, not to mention the desecration of a work of literature, and the corruption with money of a previously virtuous author? This is funny to you? Clearly, you are one of those cold-hearted capitalists who read the WSJ. It's a good thing you are unlikely to read the New York Daily News, or you would see the op-ed I wrote for them and bust a gut.
Peter Lake
Post #2814 – 20120421April 21, 2012
When I saw the picture of you and your dog in the NY Times I was reminded of a time on NPR several years ago when yo usaid you taught your dog to read.
I figured that if you could do it, so could I, so I taught my Norwich terrier, Spike, how to read. Not War and Peace or Shakespeare, but the usual dog words, “Sit, speak, roll over, solve this differential equation….” That kind of stuff.
He was about nine then and what I found most interesting was that he resented his reading lessons. Whenever I’d hold up the file card with his command on it, he’d growl and grumble before he complied.
When I read that some sheepdog could understand a thousand words then my achievement seemed slightly diminished, but nonetheless I wanted to thank you for that bit of inspiration.
Spike’s gone now, buried at sea beside a bell buoy at the mouth of Marblehead Harbor, and you can see his funeral on YouTube at spikethemoviedog.
Here he is on the beach, doing what he enjoyed, which wasn’t reading.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCPFyTBFtoY
Regards,
Peter Lake
Daniel replies:
You know, I never liked being told what to read either. I hope you have gotten, or will get, another dog. Maybe you can get that one a library card, and let him pick what he likes.
Justine Henning
Post #2815 – 20120421April 21, 2012
Many friends seem to be up in arms over the NY test questions that made a pineapple of your eggplant (if only that were the basis of their objections). I see from your blog that many kids … have a sense of humor and found the Rabbit and the Eggplant (or what would have been those, were they not a hare and a pineapple) diverting, in a welcome sort of way.
Go, kids!
Go, wonderful DP!
Bravo.
Hoping to find the Snarkout boys on the ballot, or perhaps my next census form, or … ?
Justine
(of readingpenpals.com, to which you were kind enough to submit a brief statement long ago)
Daniel replies:
I'm getting bored with this topic. A test, in a learning situation, should be a means of finding out if the students have learned the material in order for the teachers to make up deficiencies...by teaching. It's not outside the realm of possiblity that a test might be devised which could be used to evaluate how a teacher, or school, or school system is functioning--but really that would be a pretty tall order. The idea of buying such tests ready-made for a whole lot of public money from specialist companies which are known to have produced all kinds of ""educational materials"" that many good teachers consider useless or next to useless ought to raise some pretty big red flags. I, and a lot of other writers, have routinely agreed to let excerpts from their work be used in anthologies, readers, ""programmed reading materials,"" and tests. This has been going on for 40 years that I'm aware of. It's routine. Very often whoever is asking for permission to use the excerpts first tries to get them for nothing, and once an author gets wise and demands payment, they pay. Personally, I never gave any thought to a change in the implications which makes some tests, in the opinion of many informed people, pernicious. I'd venture a guess that many of my fellow authors never considered it either. It looks to me like one publisher of tests made a mistake that was bound to happen, and included a passage and questions so completely inappropriate and ridiculous that it couldn't be ignored, and happened to speak to the suspicions of many that the whole business is a shabby scam. And it was funny--so it went all around the internet and the media, as funny things do, so a lot of people are thinking about it, and maybe rethinking. I have to say, I'm not unhappy that the passage, (of which, as edited, not a single word was written by me, by the way), was printed under my name. I didn't actually do anything, other than, asking no questions, accept money from a corporation to do something or other with a few paragraphs from a book of mine, but I'm glad to have been included in the conversation. Now, I think I am done responding to posts about this. Anybody wishing to copy this and pass it around, please feel free.
Scot Phelps
Post #2812 – 20120421April 21, 2012
Dear Sir,
I just wanted to commend you for your brilliant interview in the Wall Street Journal. While the Journal may be a tool of the corporatocracy, at least they have a sense of absurdist humor to run your interview above-the-fold on the front page of the Greater New York section, with picture.
Once again, thanks!
Scot Phelps
Daniel replies:
Does it not occur to you that it might be a kind of Potemkin village interview? It's already revealed in the text of the interview that I am without conscience or ethics and will say anything for a few bucks. Could this not be WSJ's way of pretending to have a human face?