5 Novels

This collection of young adult fiction by Daniel Pinkwater offers a generous sampling of the author's favorite subject matters. Aliens, misfits, weird people, rebellious students, and fat men all have places of honor among these tales.

In Alan Mendelsohn, Boy from Mars, Leonard Neeble is such an outcast at school that even the nerds make fun of him. Just when he's given up hope on ever being happy, along comes Alan Mendelsohn, a new kid who seems to enjoy annoying teachers and blowing off the cool kids. Leonard and Alan become quick friends, and in no time at all Alan is showing Leonard how to skip school, smoke cigars, lift objects with his mind, contact alien races, and learn to enjoy who he is without the approval of others.

Slaves of show more Spiegel, simply put, is about a race of fat people that forces other races into a cooking contest, while The Snarkout Boys are a group of young lads who "snark out" at night and have many bizarre adventures. The Last Guru, is about, well, the last guru. Go figure.

My personal favorite, however, and the grand example of Daniel Pinkwater's bizarre brand of genius, is Young Adult Novel. The story revolves around Wild Dada Ducks, a self-proclaimed dadaist group consisting of Charles the Cat, the Honorable Venustiano Carranza (President of Mexico), The Indiana Zephyr, Captain Colossal, and Igor. They spend their time performing dadaist plays and acts of pointless revolution at their high school, and writing parody young adult novels featuring the fictional character Kevin Shapiro. But when they discover that there actually is a student in the school named Kevin Shapiro, they immediately take him under their wing despite his protests, ignorant to the possibility that their own creation might rebel against them. After all, that is dada.

Very few children's authors, past or present, can successfully inject this much original wackiness into their stories while simultaneously teaching much needed life lessons that many books never touch on. Granted, not all of his young adult novels are meant to inform, but even the ones meant purely for entertainment can't help but leave you feeling better for the experience. Children, young adults, and even some grownups could do with a little Pinkwater influence.

YOUNG ADULT NOVEL: Young Adult Novel is one of my most cherished childhood books. It is the story of a small group of surrealist nonconformists who call themselves the Wild Dada Ducks and spend their time staging impromptu performance art pieces, printing off irrelevant business cards, and writing stories about a boy named Kevin Shapiro. When a new kid with the same name as their fictional idol transfers to their school, they decide to elevate his status. But what happens when your own creation rejects your praise? That, as they say, is Dada. Bizarre and hilarious while remaining grounded in reality (to an extent), Young Adult Novel is the quintessential Pinkwater novel, and should be readily enjoyed by readers of any age. show less

I loved loved loved Pinkwater as a kid, and after rescuing 5 Novels from my childhood bookshelf and deciding that I needed a break, I went back for a reread. And you know what, Pinkwater still holds up as an absurdist delight. His protagonists are deeply uncool short fat weirdos, embedded in mediocre suburban high schools and conformist families who don't get them, but who enter a slipstream world of lunatic obsessives and high concept scifi weirdness.

My two favorite stories are The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, which uses cult classic movies as an entry point into a missing mad scientist and a journey into the underground life of the big city, with a whole bunch of crazy stuff along the way. Young Adult Novel is a perfect show more Dadist antifable, about a high school Dadist club who stage a event to make an even weirder kid a schoolwide hero that spins ridiculously out of control.

The other stories are not quite as good. Slaves of Spiegel is stylish fluff. Alan Mendelsohn is meaner than I remember, but has a great tour of psychic weirdness and alternate dimensions. The Last Guru's parody of Age of Aquarius mysticism has lost whatever sharpness it once had.

But on the whole, these are fun, stylish, and altogether great young adult novels. show less

I was going to write that Pinkwater is not your normal young adult author and then I got to thinking--what is your normal young adult author? Lewis Carroll had his thing for photographing young girls, C.S. Lewis was a bit of a hermit, Roald Dahl played with perversity (if you think his children fictions are dark, try some of his adult stuff, which I couldn't finish). The women might be sane, for I've never heard a nasty story about Madeline L'Engle, Diana Wynne Jones, or E. Nesbit (well, she was a bit of a socialist radical). It does not matter. Pinkwater is akin to all of these in that no one else could quite copy the things that he writes.

This is a collection of Pinkwater novels that have been out of print for years (the original show more copyrights on these range from 1978 to 1982), but not out of mind. Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, in particular, seems to be well-loved and is often mentioned as a favorite of the younger set. I'm glad to finally have this opportunity to read it, for it is indeed a fun book, full of exceedingly strange twists and turns. You aren't sure if Alan is from Mars, or if he's just playing, and then you are sure, and then you aren't. It's Philip K. Dick lite, but it's fun.
Slaves of Spiegel and The Last Guru are much more simple (I would even think that they are meant for less mature readers than for the other three in this book), but like the best children's literature, they have something for everyone. I chuckled through Slaves of Spiegel, finding the contest quite amusing, especially the description of some of the delicacies concocted in the name of food, and I thought the satire, while obvious, in The Last Guru quite effective.

The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death resembles Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars in its convoluted plot, but it seems much more grounded in reality, if a particularly eccentric reality, at least until the last quarter of the book. Its depiction of high school is stiletto sharp, but nothing as cutting as in Young Adult Novel. All the books have a jaundiced view of school, noting the common problems of cliques, moribund teachers, and the energy of youth (yes, that last is a problem--hey, you didn't think, as a teacher, that I would side totally for the kids, did you?). All of these novels were fun, and I would recommend them to your local dissident youth. show less

I'd probably give this book five stars if I didn't hate "Slaves of Spiegel"'s style. While "Young Adult Novel" is brilliant and contains one of my favourite artistic societies: The Wild Dada Ducks, I've read it many times and so enjoyed the "Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of death" most this time round. Partly because of the happy ending, but also because of all the b-movie nods.

To this day, I can not fathom the popularity of Harry Potter or the Chronicles of Narnia. Many might try to blame this on my age, or a lack of love for fantasy or adventure. The truth, however, is because I grew up reading books by authors like Daniel Pinkwater, and have since then passed up the painfully melodramatic in preference of the touchingly absurd.

This collection of young adult fiction by Daniel Pinkwater offers a generous sampling of the author's favorite subject matters. Aliens, misfits, weird people, rebellious students, and fat men all have places of honor among these tales.

In Alan Mendelsohn, Boy from Mars, Leonard Neeble is such an outcast at school that even the nerds make fun of him. Just when he's given up hope on show more ever being happy, along comes Alan Mendelsohn, a new kid who seems to enjoy annoying teachers and blowing off the cool kids. Leonard and Alan become quick friends, and in no time at all Alan is showing Leonard how to skip school, smoke cigars, lift objects with his mind, contact alien races, and learn to enjoy who he is without the approval of others.

Slaves of Spiegel, simply put, is about a race of fat people that forces other races into a cooking contest, while The Snarkout Boys are a group of young lads who "snark out" at night and have many bizarre adventures. The Last Guru, is about, well, the last guru. Go figure.

My personal favorite, however, and the grand example of Daniel Pinkwater's bizarre brand of genius, is Young Adult Novel. The story revolves around Wild Dada Ducks, a self-proclaimed dadaist group consisting of Charles the Cat, the Honorable Venustiano Carranza (President of Mexico), The Indiana Zephyr, Captain Colossal, and Igor. They spend their time performing dadaist plays and acts of pointless revolution at their high school, and writing parody young adult novels featuring the fictional character Kevin Shapiro. But when they discover that there actually is a student in the school named Kevin Shapiro, they immediately take him under their wing despite his protests, ignorant to the possibility that their own creation might rebel against them. After all, that is dada.

Very few children's authors, past or present, can successfully inject this much original wackiness into their stories while simultaneously teaching much needed life lessons that many books never touch on. Granted, not all of his young adult novels are meant to inform, but even the ones meant purely for entertainment can't help but leave you feeling better for the experience. Children, young adults, and even some grownups could do with a little Pinkwater influence. show less

This would have gotten a 5 star rating from me back when I was 16-22. Now, it gets a 3 star.
Not because the book has changed, not at all, but because I have changed.

This is a series of unconnected novellas about young teens and teens, for teens. Some ya books can still keep an adults attention, this is not one of them. It isn't meant to. Pinkwater wrote for a specific group in mind, and nobody else. And he succeeds fantastically!

The humor, the plots, all appeal to a ya with a unique sense of humor :)

I want to be a Snarker. Oh, Snark theater, whither hast thou gone? Multiplexes fill my sight and numb my brain!