THE YGGYSSEY: How Iggy Wondered What Happened to All the Ghosts, Found Out Where They Went, and Went There
by Daniel Pinkwater
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618594450
Ages 10-up
256 pages
It might seem impossible to write a review of a Daniel Pinkwater novel without using the words “zany,” “quirky,” “eccentric” or just plain “weird.” But I’m going to give it a shot, even though Pinkwater’s latest book --- like many in his beloved body of work --- could be accurately described by any of the above.
It’s a follow-up (of sorts) to his 2007 novel THE NEDDIAD, this time focusing on Neddie’s friend and neighbor, Yggdrasil (Iggy) Birnbaum. Unlike Neddie Wentworthstein and Seamus Finn, her best friends, Iggy doesn’t go to Brown-Sparrow Military Academy. Quite the contrary; she attends Harmonious Reality School, where avocados are revered for their anti-stress properties and where “you can major in finger painting through sixth grade.” Not surprisingly, school doesn’t give Iggy’s brain much of a challenge; instead, she enjoys spending time with the numerous ghosts that populate the Hollywood hotel, the Hermione, where she and her parents live.
Almost without her noticing it (they are always kind of invisible, after all), the ghosts --- from the prehistoric ghost of a woman found in the La Brea tar pits to the extremely vain ghost of silent movie star Rudolph Valentino --- are disappearing. When even Iggy’s special friend, the frequently morphing bunny ghost Chase, makes a run for it, Iggy, Neddie and Seamus follow her to Old New Hackensack, a gathering place in another plane of existence for specters and spirits from our world.
As they travel through this parallel universe, they find places that might seem familiar to readers, but are strange and frightening to these 1950s-era kids, such as New Yapyap City: “Our schools are no good, kids aren’t allowed to use the better parks, we feed them junky breakfast cereal that’s full of sugar, sell their parents a lot of defective toys and expensive clothing, and give them stupid books to read, and stupid television programs, and throw them into Juvenile Hole for any reason at all, or no reason.” Finally, Iggy’s journey culminates in a supernatural showdown with someone with whom she might share a surprising connection.
THE YGGYSSEY is full of delights, even for kids who didn’t read about Iggy and her friends in THE NEDDIAD. There’s Pinkwater’s playfully sentimental depiction of the innocence of an earlier time: “I had heard of pizza pie because of ‘That’s Amore,’ the Dean Martin song, which was on the radio all the time, but I didn’t actually know what it was…. I always pictured the pizza pie as being something like a cream pie. It’s round, but it does not resemble any pie I ever saw --- it’s not a dessert, it does not contain fruit, it does not have a top crust and a bottom crust…. It’s served hot. It tastes great! It is, without any doubt, the greatest food ever invented, and I predict it is going to be insanely popular.” Or there are the myriad literary references to such classics as ALICE IN WONDERLAND, “Hansel and Gretel,” THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS and THE WIZARD OF OZ(“Shmenda, the good witch of the Northeast… Extremely good witch. So good, she’s boring. But good.”).
What’s most enjoyable about Pinkwater’s novels is the fun he seems to have creating them, ensuring that readers will gleefully go along for the ride.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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