Forgotten Books: The Yggyssey -- Daniel Pinkwater

Go ahead, say it: "He's cheating again. The Iggyssey isn't forgotten by any means."  You're right, of course, but the question is, have you read it?  It's a sequel to The Neddiad, which I discussed here, and it's more of the same, Daniel Pinkwater doing whatever it is that he does and making it look easy.  It's like watching Ricky Jay.  What he does looks easy, but could you do it?  How is it possible?  Best not to try to figure it out.  Just enjoy it.

The plot? Well, you can see it there in the subtitle: "How Iggy Wondered What Happened to all the Ghosts and Where They Went, and Went There."  See, Iggy, whose name is Yggdrasil, lives in a haunted hotel in Hollywood in the early '50s.  (You'd know all this if you'd read The Neddiad, which you certainly should have.)  All the top ghosts are there.  As the book drifts along, the ghosts begin to drift away, and Yggy and her friends Neddy and Seamus go to an alternate reality to find them in the city of Old New Hackensack.  The second half of the book is a road trip, in the course of which the trio makes a new friend and encounters witches and other odd folks.  Okay, let's face it.  It's not so much a plot as a series of incidents, but they're great incidents.  In what other book are kids going to run into Fats Waller and sing along to "Your Feet's Too Big"? 

This is supposedly a kids' book.  How many kids are going to get the W. C. Fields reference in the name of the city where the ghosts are going?  How many of them are going to get the Fats Waller reference?  Yggy's favorite ghost is the ghost of a rabbit.  In Old New Hackensack, the rabbit has become six feet tall and is walking around with a man named Elwood.  Would any kid you know that that one?  The book is full of things like that, which means that even a guy my age is going to get most of the jokes.

Here's a warning for you.  Many, many loving descriptions of food and eating are scattered throughout the book.  Don't read it when you're hungry.  But do read it, or read any of Daniel Pinkwater's books if you want to see a real magician at work (or play).