The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror

By -
When you're feeling a bit tired and want a little fun reading, few things beat a nice Daniel Pinkwater book.  I was in a Pinkwater mood and read The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror, one of my all-time favorite books ever.

Every page has a new perfect funny sentence.  All the characters are completely crazy, each in their own special ways.  There are literary jokes I didn't get until fairly recently.  I wish I could eat at the restaurants, and most especially I would like to try a borgelnuskie, but sadly borgelnuskies don't seem to be real.  (You never know--quite often the things that sound made up in a Pinkwater book do turn out to be real.  In 1989 when I was 16 I was taken on a daytrip into Czechoslovakia, and was stunned to discover that Wartburg cars are real.)

Here is a bit.  This is Osgood Sigerson, the world's greatest detective, in discussion with the Honorable Lama Lumpo Smythe-Finkel:
"By Jove!  You're right, Lama!" the great detective shouts.  "How could I have been so blind!  It is not the Napoleon of Crime, meaning the pastry of crime--it is the Napoleon of Crime, meaning the world's nastiest and most brilliant criminal!  Wallace Nussbaum!"

Everyone should read at least a couple of Pinkwater books, ideally starting in childhood.  I'm pretty sure you can't have a well-adjusted adolescence without 'em.  If you have a kid who is about 10, start with Lizard Music.  If the kid is 12 or so, try Alan Mendelsohn, Boy From Mars.  If you want to read about the Snarkout Boys (they are Walter Galt and Winston Bongo, plus their good friend Rat, and let's not forget her uncle, Flipping Hades Terwilliger), you should start with The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, but it's not strictly necessary.  Any of these would also be a great read-aloud.

Pinkwater has written neat books for younger kids too, so don't ignore those.

Comments

  1. AmySeptember 19, 2012 at 4:46 PM

    I wonder if I can hook my 11-year-old on these. And I've also recommended After the Armistice (from below) to my daughter. Thanks for these reviews.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanSeptember 19, 2012 at 4:54 PM

    Thanks Amy! If your 11yo likes silliness then these will be hard to beat. Tell me the results. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. FaithSeptember 23, 2012 at 12:39 AM

    I think my kids might enjoy these. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more