Book Title: Yobgorgle
Author: Daniel M. Pinkwater
Author's web page: http://www.pinkwater.com/
Date: 1979
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin / Clarion
ISBN: 0-395-28970-X
Length: 156 pages
Quote: "Uncle Mel lives on nothing but junk food. On his birthday he eats a Greaso-Whammy burger."
NPR personality Daniel Manus Pinkwater is known for two distinct types of writing: serious writing about dogs, and squeaky-clean, high-spirited funny stories for kids. (When I posted a review of Yobgorgle on Associated Content, he commented that he didn't think his stories were good enough to qualify as "nonsense," which was the keyword I'd used throughout the review for this type of comedy. He's being modest.) The nonsense stories often feature monsters and space aliens, unexpectedly intelligent animals, and fat people who love junk food.
Yobgorgle is a classic Pinkwater story. Narrated by a teenaged boy, its other characters are eccentric old men who eat bizarre food. The plot has to do with the boy and men's hunt for Yobgorgle, the legendary lake monster described in suspiciously machinelike terms. Sure enough, Yobgorgle turns out to be a machine, and...read it to find out.
Let's just say that it's comic nonsense all the way, with subtle ironies (the narrator browses in a library and picks up Pinkwater's previous novel, Lizard Music, but can't get interested in it) and gross-out food jokes. And although you might not want to repeat the food jokes at table, none of the jokes is mean or smutty or likely to offend anyone's grandmother.
You don't have to be in grade seven to chortle at the image of a man driving a battered off-brand car while wearing a chicken suit, being told that "people are staring" and calmly replying, "You've got to expect that when you drive a classic car"...well, maybe it does help. Then again, if you want to try to imagine Uncle Mel's daffy friend introducing him, with a bogus French accent, as "Professor Pierre Unclemel," being a grown-up and imagining how your adult friends would react to that might help, too. Anyway, Yobgorgle is recommended to readers of any age who enjoy silliness.
What's not to love? Well, you either like Pinkwater's comedy or don't, and if you like it one of the things you like about it will probably be its sex-free quality. He says he's always found it hard to do "relationship" stories, but in some of Pinkwater's novels, e.g. The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, there were plausible, sensible, sex-free girl characters. Yobgorgle is not one of those books. All the characters are male, and demented in a deliciously stereotypical guy way, with no noticeable emotional reactions to each other's wackiness. Since it's nonsense, the absence of female characters is probably easier for seventh grade girls to forgive than it would be in a serious or realistic novel.
Daniel M. Pinkwater is alive and actively blogging, and will be offered royalty payments for any copies of this book or other books by him you may buy here. (Currently, you have to use e-mail to buy books from this site via Paypal. We expect this to change in December or January.)
Author: Daniel M. Pinkwater
Author's web page: http://www.pinkwater.com/
Date: 1979
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin / Clarion
ISBN: 0-395-28970-X
Length: 156 pages
Quote: "Uncle Mel lives on nothing but junk food. On his birthday he eats a Greaso-Whammy burger."
NPR personality Daniel Manus Pinkwater is known for two distinct types of writing: serious writing about dogs, and squeaky-clean, high-spirited funny stories for kids. (When I posted a review of Yobgorgle on Associated Content, he commented that he didn't think his stories were good enough to qualify as "nonsense," which was the keyword I'd used throughout the review for this type of comedy. He's being modest.) The nonsense stories often feature monsters and space aliens, unexpectedly intelligent animals, and fat people who love junk food.
Yobgorgle is a classic Pinkwater story. Narrated by a teenaged boy, its other characters are eccentric old men who eat bizarre food. The plot has to do with the boy and men's hunt for Yobgorgle, the legendary lake monster described in suspiciously machinelike terms. Sure enough, Yobgorgle turns out to be a machine, and...read it to find out.
Let's just say that it's comic nonsense all the way, with subtle ironies (the narrator browses in a library and picks up Pinkwater's previous novel, Lizard Music, but can't get interested in it) and gross-out food jokes. And although you might not want to repeat the food jokes at table, none of the jokes is mean or smutty or likely to offend anyone's grandmother.
You don't have to be in grade seven to chortle at the image of a man driving a battered off-brand car while wearing a chicken suit, being told that "people are staring" and calmly replying, "You've got to expect that when you drive a classic car"...well, maybe it does help. Then again, if you want to try to imagine Uncle Mel's daffy friend introducing him, with a bogus French accent, as "Professor Pierre Unclemel," being a grown-up and imagining how your adult friends would react to that might help, too. Anyway, Yobgorgle is recommended to readers of any age who enjoy silliness.
What's not to love? Well, you either like Pinkwater's comedy or don't, and if you like it one of the things you like about it will probably be its sex-free quality. He says he's always found it hard to do "relationship" stories, but in some of Pinkwater's novels, e.g. The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, there were plausible, sensible, sex-free girl characters. Yobgorgle is not one of those books. All the characters are male, and demented in a deliciously stereotypical guy way, with no noticeable emotional reactions to each other's wackiness. Since it's nonsense, the absence of female characters is probably easier for seventh grade girls to forgive than it would be in a serious or realistic novel.
Daniel M. Pinkwater is alive and actively blogging, and will be offered royalty payments for any copies of this book or other books by him you may buy here. (Currently, you have to use e-mail to buy books from this site via Paypal. We expect this to change in December or January.)
Meanwhile, click here to "meet" Mr. Pinkwater at a website that contains fresh goofiness and updates on his new books: http://www.pinkwater.com/
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