Daniel Pinkwater is a prolific and popular author and illustrator who is celebrated as a particularly original, imaginative, and versatile contributor to literature for children and young adults. Renowned as a humorist and satirist, Pinkwater creates unusual books that characteristically point out the absurdity of reality, especially as related to contemporary society, while presenting young readers with both solid morals and plenty of laughs. The author is well known for his irreverent--some say anarchic--sensibility as well as for the droll wit he uses to skewer his targets. Directing his picture books and fiction to primary and middle graders and young adults, Pinkwater is often praised for his clear recollections of childhood as well as for his understanding of children and of what appeals to them. Pinkwater depicts the entrance of the fantastic into the everyday while presenting the intrusion of the bizarre and ludicrous as a regular--and natural--occurrence...