Monday, June 22, 2009

Summer Reading -- The Yggyssey by Daniel Pinkwater

You know, I had never thought about the The Wizard of Oz being based on Homer's Odysseus. However, Daniel Pinkwater clearly had, when he wrote this book. The Iggyssey: How Iggy Wondered What Happened to All the Ghosts, Found Out Where They Went, and Went There is a sequel to The Neddiad. Yggdrasil Birnbaum is familiar with the ghosts of Los Angeles (of whom there are many) and she becomes concerned when they begin to disappear. Determined to solve the mystery, Iggy and her friends Neddie Wentworthstein and Seamus Finn follow a ghostly bunny through a portal that leads ... somewhere.

The Yggyssey pays homage to some great moments in children's literature. It is also filled with Pinkwater's signature humor -- intelligent, self-deprecating, puckish at times. The Neddiad and The Yggyssey are both quick reads, very entertaining, highly recommended.

3 comments:

Lisa Palmer said...

Ah, the Epic Journey home. I squeezed a few cheap literary comparisons from it in college essays (I graduated in 2001, I was Leo the Late Bloomer).

Seriously though, I like your book reviews, and IF I ever start a blog about my regular life, I think I would write a few myself! Now if I could just get around to joining a book club...

Suzy said...

Lisa, we could do an online book club. It would be fun! Unless you want real, human contact. :-) Not that I'm not a real human, but it would be hard to meet -- say, in Omaha (or Denver?) once a month.

Lisa Palmer said...

Any Pretty place would work for me! But SERIOUSLY, I would love an online book club, especially one with you in it! Should we make a list of books that catch our fancy, then choose? I saw a very intriguing interview on THE COLBERT REPORT with the author of Shopclass as Soulcraft (and don't be impressed, I had to stop and google how in the hell to spell intriguing, isn't that a bizarre u?). But maybe this is a big enough taste of that one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=2&sq=crawford&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all