Summerbooks #17 and #18: Two MORE Pinkwater books

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 Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl, and Crazy in Poughkeepsie, by Daniel M. Pinkwater

I feel like this might be cheating, but I did read these books and they are new to me, so I guess they count.  The two books I read recently, earlier works the Neddiad and the Yggysey, and these two all go together, sort of.  They, sort of, take place in about the same universe, characters go in and out, etc. though they are not necessarily consistent all the time.  Why worry?

Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl is about Big Audrey, who is in the Yggysey in Los Angeles.  She comes from a parallel dimension/universe, and even in the world she grew up in, having cat whiskers is pretty unusual.  Audrey catches a ride from LA to Poughkeepsie with this actor guy, Marlon Brando, who plays the bongos a lot.  There she gets a job at a UFO bookstore and makes some friends, especially a professor and Molly (the Dwerg), who both spend time at the mental asylum down the road.  And Chicken Nancy (age 140), and they see UFOs, and have lots of adventures, including some dimension-hopping and some river-rafting along the Hudson.  Does Audrey have a doppelganger?  Perhaps!  Is revelation and pocket universes around the corner?  Possibly!  

A very nice read.  I'm happy to have finally read these after I'd not really bothered with the newer


titles.  A mistake, that was.

Crazy in Poughkeepsie is, partly, Molly's story after she leaves Kingston but before she winds up in the mental asylum in Poughkeepsie, but also Mick's story.  Mick comes home from an extremely dodgy summer camp to find that his brother has installed his guru in Mick's bedroom.  This brother went off to Tibet, found the Honorable Guru Lumpo Smythe-Finkel in a cave and about to be evicted for non-payment of rent, and brought him home.  (Yay, it's the guru from the Snarkout Boys!)  Every day, the guru and Mick take Lhasa the dog for a walk and explore Poughkeepsie.  They meet Molly, who is living in a tree, find a ghost party in an abandoned warehouse,  and decide they must all go on a terrific road trip with the ghost of a lovable whale to find whale heaven, which is in the mountains.  What mountains?  Who knows.  It's wonderful. 

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