“I like being an underrated author. It is so much better than being an overrated author.â€
“Tell your mother that junk food is what one calls a ‘literary device.’ I would not eat a Big Mac if you held a gun on me.â€â€œSome of these things seem to make more sense when you hear them on the radio while driving in traffic.â€
— Author Daniel Pinkwater
Daniel Pinkwater’s fans are devoted to him with a cult-like intensity — and that’s just fine with him.
For 35 years, the distinctive-looking author of over 100 quirky picture books, chapter books and young adult novels, including “The Hoboken Chicken Emergency,†“The Big Orange Splot†and “At the Hotel Larry,†has been catering to an audience that’s smart and unconventional — in other words, he writes for people like himself.
“I’m a cult figure in this regard,†Pinkwater said in a recent phone interview from his studio in the Hudson Valley, where he “works†just down the hall from his writer/illustrator wife, Jill.
“If you’re a bright kid, you’re tired of being given stuff that assumes you’re dumb. I’m an honest writer; I respect my readers. Kids respond to my books because I know my trade. That brings them back for more — I don’t have many readers that read just one.â€
Pinkwater not only likes his readers, he happily interacts with them. One of the advantages of being part of the small, loyal band that follows his constantly growing list of instant classics is the personal attention he gives. On the P-Zone, a Web site created by fan Ed Weiss, the portly pen-pusher holds a sometimes sassy, ongoing online conversation with his admirers, who ask him everything from whether he’s the same chubby kid named Manus Pinkwater who lived in the apartment building next door (he is), to where to find the second half of the audiobook of his intergalactic adventure “Borgel†(you can’t; only one tape fit in the box, so that’s all they sold).
An e-mail one evening to the author asking for an interview had no sooner been sent when the phone rang, and the inimitable voice of the master himself (familiar both from his audiobooks and his regular radio commentary on NPR) came on, ready for an hour-long chat on children’s books, the seamy side of the publishing business, and why he writes so much about the Arctic.
From “Uncle Boris in the Yukon and Other Shaggy Dog Stories†(a collection of humor for adults) to “Irving and Muktuk: Two Bad Bears,†about a pair of blueberry muffin-thieving polar bears in the fictional town of Yellowtooth (blueberry muffins themselves being another recurring theme in his fiction), for Pinkwater the frozen north is familiar territory.
“I come from Chicago, which is similar to the Arctic in a lot of respects,†he said. “I once heard an old explorer say on the radio that he came closer to dying of the cold on Michigan Avenue than anywhere he’d been.â€
Years of being forced by his nattily-attired gangster father to wear low-cut Oxfords through the snow instead of boots further strengthened his identification with the Eskimos. Then one day, while living in New York City, Pinkwater spied a Malamute and decided he had to have a dog like that. Luckily, he was married to an animal lover “as crazy as myself. If I said, ‘Let’s get a wolf,’ she would have said yes.â€
Pinkwater and his wife — whose training manual “Superpuppy†is still in print after more than 20 years — have owned a number of sled dogs over the years, as well as an Icelandic horse named Lokkur, which Pinkwater described as “a lot like a compact car.†But his current love is Lulu. A Canadian Inuit dog, or Qimmiq, Lulu has a pet dog of her own, a Labrador retriever named Maxine 2. According to her doting owner, Lulu has trained Maxine 2, and both of them can read _ a feat he insists is well documented.
“She’s like a cross between a wolf and a chimp: beautiful and really, really complicated,†he said.
And so Pinkwater’s books are populated with Huskies and Mounties, a blue moose with delusions of grandeur who’s the maitre d’ at a little out-of-the-way place famous for its gingerbread, and lots and lots of polar bears. One advantage to writing about Irving and Muktuk, whose latest chronicle, “Bad Bears and a Bunny,†is due in April, and Larry, the hotel lifeguard and ice cream company mascot, is that “Jill draws them so beautifully.â€
Although he used to illustrate his own books, at some point his wife took over those duties, working in the same felt-tipped marker style but, Pinkwater feels, much, much better. Most children’s book authors never get to meet their book’s illustrators. For the Pinkwaters, the arrangement is — the occasional fight over ideas aside — an advantage.
“It’s like having Disney Studios down the hall,†he said. “I can make suggestions, she’ll see if she can top me. And she’s just so happy doing it. She’s in there now, surrounded by dogs and cats; she’s watching TV; it’s a whiz bang.â€
Pinkwater’s writing routine sounds equally unpressured.
“I’m obliged to show up at my desk,†he said. “What happens, happens. Some days I watch TV or search the Internet for strange things. Sometimes things happen that I can’t see. I’ll be bidding on an Eskimo bone carving and suddenly it’s all there.â€
He can take a couple of days or a year to write a picture book. His latest book took six months to come together, he said.
“A picture book has to be right on the money. Writing novels is easier. People reading a good novel don’t want it to end. You can go on and on. You really have the time and space to develop the story. With a picture book, you have to be so attentive. I can maybe do two or three picture books a year, but I could write six novels a year.â€
As it happens, Pinkwater believes his newest novel, “The Artsy Smartsy Club,†is his best ever. It takes place in Hoboken, N.J., another favorite Pinkwater locale, and features many characters and elements from other books: Henrietta, the 6-foot-tall, 266-pound chicken; her onetime owner Arthur Bobowicz, now grown, and Jolly Roger, Hoboken’s famous dog-about-town. It’s a story about three bored kids who stumble across some amazing sidewalk chalk drawings and end up spending the summer immersed in art. There are references to Bellini, Vincent Van Gogh and Albert Pinkham Ryder and a lot of talk about how to look at what you’re painting that will really make kids think.
Pinkwater’s people talk funny — they always refer to each other by their first and last names and tend to eschew contractions — and he makes no effort to get the latest slang just right (no 11-year-old, and probably not even some parents of 11-year-olds, will get the reference to “Here comes da judgeâ€). But that’s OK, because Pinkwater and his readers have their own language.
It’s a smart, funny book for smart, funny kids. And once they’ve tried one, they’ll keep coming back for more. Pinkwater still remembers the little girl, no older than 6, who came up to him at an event for local authors and told him she’d read all his books. It took a few tries, but after she began reeling off the titles of all the books she’d read, including the young adult novels, Pinkwater realized she wasn’t exaggerating and gratefully presented her with the response she’d been waiting for.
“It’s an honor,†Pinkwater told the diminutive fan, “to have a reader like you.â€
Kathy Ceceri of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is a regular contributor to The Family Beat. Her Family Online column [Page ???? ] runs every month.
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Pittsfield Road Cut Moratorium
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The city's annual city road cut moratorium will be in effect from Nov. 29, 2024 to March 15, 2025.
The road cut moratorium is implemented annually, as a precautionary measure, to ensure roads are kept clear of construction work during snow events and to limit the cuts in roads that are filled with temporary patches while material is unavailable.
During this period, steel plates are not to be used to cover open excavations in roads. Also, the Department of Public Services and Utilities will not be issuing the following permits:
• General Permit
• Sewer Public Utility Connection Permit
• Stormwater Public Utility Connection Permit
• Water Public Utility Connection Permit
• Trench Permit
Limited exceptions will be made for emergency work that is determined to be an immediate threat to the health or safety of a property or its occupants.
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