Preliminary thoughts on rereading Daniel Pinkwater
avant le déluge
(Upcoming appearances: June 1, 12–5, Skullastic Book Fair, American Legion Post 16, Shelton CT | July 15, 6–7:30, author talk, Hagaman Library, East Haven CT)
Last year I read several books by Daniel M. Pinkwater aloud to my son, who was four years old at the time. As I was reading, the plucky young lad asked me two questions that changed the course of my life. The questions were:
1. Why is everyone [in these books] eating corn flakes?
2. Why did Ned Feldman draw a big orange splot on his homework?
Good questions, kid! The answer to the first question was fairly easy: corn flakes are a pretty normal thing to eat, especially for breakfast, so it was hardly remarkable that so many characters in Daniel Pinkwater books (the magic goose, the mice from Wallpaper from Space, wempires, passengers on Air Enterprise flights, etc.) eat corn flakes. But the second one was more of a pickle.
Ned Feldman is the narrator of the children’s book Ned Feldman, Space Pirate. The big orange splot is a chaos-making paint splatter in the children’s book The Big Orange Splot. Both books are written and illustrated by Daniel Pinkwater, but share few other similarities beyond the fact that I have read one or both out loud on an almost nightly basis. But I thought the boy (plucky young lad that he was) had indeed perceived something. Why did Ned Feldman draw a splot on his homework? Dredging up even a partial answer to that question took me the better part of a year.
Long ago, in my wayward youth, I had produced (in conjunction with Ian Stoba) an alphabetical guide to then-extant Pinkwater characters. Dubbed “The Hoboken Chicken Emergencyclopedia,” it still resides, in somewhat fragmentary form, on Pinkwater’s official website. But I had not continued my Pinkwater studies with the same assiduity as I had in my youth, wayward as it was. In my quest for an answer to this splot question, that all changed. First I reread exactly one hundred books by Daniel Pinkwater. Then I read for the first time two more Daniel Pinkwater books—one for the first time because it was only released in 2025, one for the first time because I had never before been able to lay my hands on a copy, and I finally did in the kindly bosom of a rare manuscript room (somewhat excessive, but true) in a university research library. The only book I did not reread was The Terrible Roar, in part because I could not find a copy, and in part because I thought I remembered it pretty well from the last time I’d read it, years before (it’s really short). I took, as I read, extensive notes, although not even certain, at first, why.
Some of what I was learning I synthesized into a book review (which I entered into a contest and lost) of Pinkwater’s book Young Adults; you can read it here if you want. Then I burrowed deeper and deeper into some kind of grand synthesis of everything Daniel M. Pinkwater (DMP, I call him) ever wrote. My appreciation for his writings increased and increased until it threatened to spill out into something vulgar.
Finally I decided the best thing, or possibly the easiest thing, to do would be to rank all 1031 books, from best to worst. And that is what I did, with miniature essays exploring all the thematic connections.
The result is about 45,000 words long. It is perhaps too long for anyone who is not a masochist or DMP obsessive to swallow, but of course the benefit is that it is the kind of thing one can jump around in. I encourage some jumping.
I will be posting it in its entirety on Tuesday, one week from today. This warning gives you an opportunity to clear your calendars; to notify your DMP-loving friends; to brush up your Pinkwater. Also, I need to proofread it.
There’s a little but about Ned Feldman’s orange splot there, but not too much. Not too much. But there’s a lot more.
DMP actually wrote a 104th book, but it’s a how-to book on dog training, so I left it out of my considerations.