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Neddie & Friends book cover 1
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Neddie & Friends
Series · 6 books · 2007-2022

Books in series

The Neddiad book cover
#1

The Neddiad

How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization

2007

The old powers try to come back, and the planet is plunged into chaos, and civilization is destroyed, and it gets all violent and evil...the old legends tell that a hero...with the sacred turtle, always... Los Angeles, California. Neddie Wentworthstein is the guy with the turtle. Sandor Eucalyptus is the guy with the jellybean. Sholmos Bunyip wants the turtle...and he'll stop at nothing to get it. This is the story of how Neddie, three good friends, a shaman, a ghost, and a little maneuver known as the French substitution determine the fate of the world.
The Yggyssey book cover
#2

The Yggyssey

How Iggy Wondered What Happened to All the Ghosts, Found Out Where They Went, and Went There

2009

A sequel to critically acclaimed THE NEDDIAD told from the point of view of Ned's friend, Iggy La Brea Woman is missing. Valentino, too. The ghosts of Los Angeles are disappearing right and left! Iggy Birnbaum is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, no matter what Neddie Wentworthstein and Seamus Finn say. There’s just the little matter of traveling to another plane of existence, first…and then, of course, not pissing off a witch once she gets there. From L.A. to Old New Hackensack, fans of The Neddiad will be delighted to join up with Iggy, Neddie, Seamus, and the usual apparitional entourage for another weird and wonderful adventure by Daniel Pinkwater. As Neil Gaiman said about the first book: "it's funny and tender and strange and impossible to describe. What Pinkwater does is magic and I'm grateful for it." THE IGGYSSEY is vintage Pinkwater: laugh out loud funny, incredible characters, dialogue, humor. And like THE NEDDIAD, this book will be similarly illustrated throughout by Calef Brown.
Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl book cover
#3

Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl

2010

Big Audrey is a girl . . . with cat s whiskers . . . and sort of cat s eyes. But, is there an other cat-whiskered, sort of cat-eyed girl? Big Audrey waves goodbye to her friends Iggy and Neddie, Seamus, and Crazy Wig, in Los Angeles and hitches a ride with bongo-playing-while-driving Marlon Brando across the country to Poughkeepsie, New York, city of mystery. She finds she has questions needing answers and a bit of inter-plane-of-existence traveling to do. Big Audrey and her telepathic friend Molly zigzag off on an incredibly strange and kooky adventure, and solve the mystery of the cat-whiskered doppelganger."
Bushman Lives! book cover
#4

Bushman Lives!

2012

“What Pinkwater does is magic, and I’m grateful for it.” —Neil Gaiman (about The Neddiad ) Is Bushman the gorilla alive? According to the papers, he died a long time ago. Why is he so important to the high school senior and aspiring Great Artist Harold Knishke? It’s a hot summer in 1960s Chicago, and people are on the streets late at night, including the Chicken Man and Molly the dwerg. While reading this hilarious young adult novel (with illustrations by Calef Brown!) teens will ask themselves, “Why am I reading this?” and “Is Harold about to embark on a voyage of great adventure?” He is.
Adventures of a Dwergish Girl book cover
#5

Adventures of a Dwergish Girl

2020

Molly O'Malley is a clever, adventurous girl. She is also a Dwerg. Dwergs are strange folks who live very quietly in the Catskill mountains, have lots of gold, and are kind of like dwarves (but also not!). Molly isn't interested in cooking and weaving, as Dwergish girls are expected to be. So she sets off to see the world for herself. Which means a new job, a trip to New York City, prowling gangsters, an adorable king, a city witch, and many historical ghosts. More importantly, it means excellent pizza, new friends, and very quick thinking. Someone is looking for the Dwergs and their gold. Can Molly O'Malley save the day?
Crazy in Poughkeepsie book cover
#6

Crazy in Poughkeepsie

2022

The inimitable Daniel Pinkwater (The Big Orange Splot; The Hoboken Chicken Emergency) brings his zany wit and wisdom to a gentle middle-grade adventure following a kid's off-the-beaten-path journey, featuring an unfocused spiritual guide, a not-quite-dwarf, a graffiti "artist," a ghost whale, and mystical shenanigans galore. Mick is a good kid, but maybe he can use just a little guidance. But it's unclear who will be guiding whom, because Mick's brother came home from Tibet with the self-proclaimed Guru Lumpo Smythe-Finkel and his dog Lhasa—and then promptly settled both of them in Mick's bedroom. (The thing about this kind of guru is that he doesn't seem to know exactly what he's trying to do. He sure does seem to be hungry, though.) Anyway, Mick agrees to something like a quest, roaming the suburbs with the oddest group of misfits: Lumpo and Lhasa; graffiti-fanatic Verne; and Verne's unusual friend Molly. Molly is a Dwergish girl—don't worry if you don't know what that is yet—and she seems to be going off the rails a bit. But she knows that she is defniitely not Verne's girlfriend. Along the way, the gang will get invited to a rollicking ghost party, consult a very strange little king, and actually discover the truth about Heaven. Or a version of the truth anyway, because in a Daniel Pinkwater tale, the truth is never the slightest bit like what you're expecting.

Author

Daniel Pinkwater
Author · 90 books
Daniel Manus Pinkwater is an author of mostly children's books and is an occasional commentator on National Public Radio. He attended Bard College. Well-known books include Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Fat Men from Space, Borgel, and the picture book The Big Orange Splot. Pinkwater has also illustrated many of his books in the past, although for more recent works that task has passed to his wife Jill Pinkwater.
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