Dear Daniel and Jill,
I know this moose isn’t blue but I thought he might be a friend of the blue moose. Check out this moose kicking a ball around!
www.cannedpets.com/video/moose-kicks-a-ball-around
Fran
What a nice moose! Any soccer team would be glad to have him! Thanks for sharing this nice video.
Mr Pinkwater
I do declare that your books are one of the best things that happened to me. Without them, I would not be looking forward to high school. Alan Mendelshon, the Snarkers, and the Wild Dada Ducks have spurred me on to actually get into high school, where I plan to start a Dada Ducks club of my own…if that is acceptable? Also, the Great Popsicle (mine dog) sends his regards.
Dan Quixote, Lord of La Mancha
I foresee encounters with the authorities for you. Kindly do not mention my name while being fingerprinted and interrogated. I wish you a successful high school career.
Dear Daniel,
May I call you Daniel? I’d like to, because you already seem like a dear old friend. Rainy Morning is my particular favorite because something about it makes my husband giggle uncontrollably as we read it aloud to my son. Rainy mornings in our house are no longer complete without some corn muffins, some soggy animals, and Beethoven on the stereo (he never seems to appear in the flesh, which is a good thing, I suppose). Now if only I could find a small European circus…
Thank you for the website, the podcast, and the list of your and Jill’s books. I look forward to tracking down a few more gems to keep my 8 year old reluctant reader going and giggling.
You may call me anything you like. I am so happy you mentioned Rainy Morning, which has such wonderful illustrations by Jill!
Dear Mr. Pinkwater: I am seven years old and I am reading your book “Superpuppy”. I think you did a great job on it. I wonder why you wrote this book? Do you have any other dogs besides Maxine and Lulu? I have two dogs, JoJo and Lucy. I picked out this book from my school library because I want a German Shepard when I grow up. I really enjoyed this book.
Thank you,
Jerica
Thank you! Is the copy of Superpuppy you are reading the one with Lulu's picture (when she was 4 months old) on the cover? She is 11 1/2 now. Maxine II is 5. They are our only dogs. We wrote the book because we thought it might be helpful to people like you.
Dear Senor Plonkwanker, Sir:
Try not to cozzen me. Contumely and vernicious featherbedding will not serve, my good sir! We are on to you, Honkwafer. Let loose the Hounds of Hell, I say; unleash the dogs of war; unzip the Borzoi of Fecundity! This cavalier attitude of yourn cannot long prevail, not with the new sprinkler system we’ve installed, shiny new Japanese plastic piping it is. This is your last warning. Cease your infamous rodomontade and return our yearling.
Yrs. in hypothermia, Jack/Doc/&/Reggie
I attempted to render this message using the Google translator--however it does not yet have an Senile Glossolalia-to-English feature. I did, however, have better luck with my 1948 Captain Midnight Secret Squadron decoder badge. Readers in possession of that decrypting tool, and particularly those with an interest in Abnormal Psychology will find the text of interest. (I regret I can't post the plain-language version here, in deference to the sensibilities of the number of children and child-like adults who attend this forum.) Notwithstanding, it is always an honor to hear from such a distinguished short story-writer.
How do you explain the undeniable Pinkwaterianism of the 1915 silent movie “Lady Baffles and Detective Duck in the Dread Society of the Sacred Sausage?”
The Audio Books are sublime and extraordinarily generous. Will “Alan Mendelsohn, Boy From Mars” be joining them?
Various ancestors of mine may have crossed from Poland to the movie
colony and back again--and also assumed various names. The family history is murky and obscure.
I'm glad you're enjoying the audio books. Please tell your friends, or strangers if you have no friends. Alan Mendelsohn may possibly be presented.
Regarding the request for the author of the book series “Secretary Hawkins”, I believe I know the author. I have been doing some geneology and family history and found a note that says a family member wrote the series. Her name is Wilhelmina M Schulkers and she was born 17 Jan 1877 in Covington, Kentucky and she died 20 Nov 1957 in Elsmere, Kentucky. She may have had help with the books from her sister Mary M Schulkers (B: 1881) or her brothers, Robert Francis Schulkers(B: 1890) who was the editor of a publishing compnay and Francis L Schulkers (B: 1893).
Many thanks to you for clearing up this mystery!
My mom and I just read your short story The Lone Ranger from the Guys Read Book.We really enjoyed the story,but we cant figure out what the profession of the father is so can you please email us back with the answer of the question.
I never figured it out either. Glad you liked the story.
Dear Mr. Punkwasser:
I have just completed reading Vol. 7 of your masterwork chrestomathy YO-YO MAN, and I must tell you I found it turgid, exploitative, ephemeral and unclean. The content of social conscience and jam was minimal; and the dog looks a lot like the recycling of, ahem, a vaporous canine from otherwhere. I have alerted not only the American Booksellers Association and the necessary postal authorities, but the strike-force action committee of the International Wombat Storm Window and Bidet Protectorate. We will soon drive you to ground, Plinkvetter, lay you by your heels, hoist your petard and otherwise conflate your dudgeon…no matter its height!
Y’never calls no more. Was it something I said? Was it EVERYTHING I said? Or are you done using me like an old bedroom slipper, and hath cast me away, seduced and abandoned?
Piteously, Yr. Pal, Harlan
Harlaneleh! Every time I called you first put on that pathetic Pakistani accent, then pretended not to know me, and followed up with a Niagara of contumely and billingsgate, references to interspecies coupling, and applied loathsome epithets to my mother. After 20 years of this, I began to suspect that you might not be happy to hear from me. I see they've let you have a computer. What this spells for the fate of the internet, I do not like to think.
I just wanted to let you know that my children enjoy “The Big Orange Splot.” I’ve been reading to them from the same copy I enjoyed as a child and it’s amazing to watch them make the same comments about the drawings and the story that I did when I was little. Thank you.
Korinthia
Thank you! Unless the comments are along the lines of, ""Phooey!"" and ""Who thought up this stupid story?""
I have been reading your extraordinary books to my children for years–well, for several months, it only seems like years but in a good way, really–and have now enjoyed seventeen of them. When the children occasionally tire of a steady diet of Pinkwater we cheat on you with some Richard Peck, but we are pretty much a Pinkwater family. We would like to know if you ever intend to craft a sequel to Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars. These are characters and exploits of which we simply must have more. We are great fans but not so weird you need to erect a barbed-wire fence or anything. We look forward to reading more of what you have already written and all that you are still to write. Cheers!
Thank you. I feel like saying this, so I will say it to you: I believe that, over the past 40 years, more than half my energy has been expended dealing with publishers, and the other less-than-half in doing creative work. By dealing with publishers, I mean tricking them into doing what is good for them, for me, and for readers. There are many books I would have liked to write, but never did--this because I could not persuade a publisher to write a contract for them. One example: It took me years of trying to persuade different publishers to do an inexpensive paperback bind-up of all my out-of-print novels. They all said things like, ""That sounds like it would be hard to do,"" ""We have never done that before,"" and ""We don't know how to do that."" Finally Farrar, Straus and Giroux did it in a limited way. ""5 Novels,"" hovered around the number 300 on the Amazon.com sales ranking for the first 18 months, and is still selling steadily years and years later. Simon and Schuster had similar success with ""4 Fantastic Novels."" There are many books I would like to write, and you might well like to read, that will never exist. I continue to do what I can. Meanwhile, I invite you to visit the Pinkwater Podcast on this website, where there are free audio books you may download. And I invite any smart publisher reading this to get in touch with me for some serious conversation.
Hey Daniel, I’m loving your stuff in Wondertime. It’s such a gorgeous parenting magazine, and I really enjoy your thoughts on children’s literature. Thanks!
Karma
Thank you! They make my stuff seem better than it is with the classy layouts.
I bought a copy of Karel Capek’s “Nine Fairy Tales & One More Thrown in for Good Measure” in 1990 and immediately carried it on board an overnight train– but I never actually read it until this evening. Both the text and the illustrations (by Karel’s brother Josef) seem eerily similar to something you might have come up with. If someone had handed me an unattributed copy of the story “How the Famous Sidney Hall Captured the Magician,” I would have bet a potato-turnip duck-fat latke that no one but you could have written it. I presume many others have pointed out this resemblance? Is Sidney Hall in fact Osgood Sigerson?
I know almost nothing about Karel Capek, except he was probably a better writer than I am, and may have invented the word, ""robot."" So, yes.
I’m a writer and I am dedicating the month of February to writing Valentines to my favorite children’s book writers and illustrators. Because of your wonderfully bizarre brilliance, I wanted you to be my very first Valentine:) Here’s the text:
Bizarre words delight.
Like a spell cast by lizards.
Music to my ears.
To the Great Daniel Pinkwater,
Thank you for filling my childhood with dancing popsicles, bands of lizards, and dangerous avocados. You taught me how to delve into the moonscape of my imagination and claim it as my own. Your stories lead me on journeys I never could have dreamed of, inspiring me to dream
farther and write my own stories. Thank you for the indescribably delicious books you’ve created.
Your ever enthralled fan, Sara Wilson Etienne
It can be seen in full color on my blog at:
www.sarawilsonetienne.com/i-heart-daniel-pinkwater.htm
Thanks again so much and Happy Valentines day! Sara
Wow! I have gotten some valentines in my time--well, no, actually I haven't, but this would be the best one if I ever had.
One of my two sons has just received prescription eye glasses for the first time in his young life. He is very excited, and really couldn’t be happier about this event. His twin brother is taking his lack of lenses well, but feels a tad left behind. This seems to be the inverse of what my peers reaction would be when I was a lad, in the 1970s. Do you recall how you felt when you first joined the ranks of the bespectaled? Was it like a Cubs’ three game win streak, or like a Ukrainian tugboat pilot losing his hat in March?
I plan to write about this someday. Meanwhile, ask the optician for a pair of cheapest frames for your non-corrected twin, have the maker's name if any removed from the demo or plano lenses that come with the frame, and there he is, happy. Or buy him a pair of shades, and he can be cool and happy.
