Lizard Music
Jan 2011 · New York Review of Books
4.6star
8 reviews
Ebook
160
Pages
family_home
Eligible
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About this ebook
An ALA Notable Book
Kids ages 9-12 will “delight in [the] oddness” of this Home Alone-style tale set in the 1970s—from a prolific children’s author who captures “a magic that’s not like anyone else’s” (Neil Gaiman).
With Victor’s parents out of town, he is free to investigate the mysterious lizard musicians who have recently appeared on TV . . .
Things Victor loves: pizza with anchovies, grape soda, B movies aired at midnight, the evening news. And with his parents off at a resort and his older sister shirking her babysitting duties, Victor has plenty of time to indulge himself and to try a few things he’s been curious about. Exploring the nearby city of Hogboro, he runs into a curious character known as the Chicken Man (a reference to his companion, an intelligent hen named Claudia who lives under his hat).
The Chicken Man speaks brilliant nonsense, but he seems to be hip to the lizard musicians (real lizards, not men in lizard suits) who’ve begun appearing on Victor’s television after the broadcast of the late-late movie. Are the lizards from outer space? From “other space”? Together Victor and the Chicken Man, guided by the able Claudia, journey to the lizards’ floating island, a strange and fantastic place that operates with an inspired logic of its own.
Kids ages 9-12 will “delight in [the] oddness” of this Home Alone-style tale set in the 1970s—from a prolific children’s author who captures “a magic that’s not like anyone else’s” (Neil Gaiman).
With Victor’s parents out of town, he is free to investigate the mysterious lizard musicians who have recently appeared on TV . . .
Things Victor loves: pizza with anchovies, grape soda, B movies aired at midnight, the evening news. And with his parents off at a resort and his older sister shirking her babysitting duties, Victor has plenty of time to indulge himself and to try a few things he’s been curious about. Exploring the nearby city of Hogboro, he runs into a curious character known as the Chicken Man (a reference to his companion, an intelligent hen named Claudia who lives under his hat).
The Chicken Man speaks brilliant nonsense, but he seems to be hip to the lizard musicians (real lizards, not men in lizard suits) who’ve begun appearing on Victor’s television after the broadcast of the late-late movie. Are the lizards from outer space? From “other space”? Together Victor and the Chicken Man, guided by the able Claudia, journey to the lizards’ floating island, a strange and fantastic place that operates with an inspired logic of its own.
Ratings and reviews
4.6
8 reviews
Sam Hahn
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June 23, 2015
Great book! Pinkwater is like America's answer to Roald Dahl. He likes to take a young average boy and put them in zany circumstances. Except even his everything characters have querks that make them outsiders. In this book the lead has a fixation on the evening news and in enchanted by Walter Cronkite. I will never forget when the boy tries lemon flavored cigarettes early in this book. I won't even attempt to explain the chicken man, but he is as endearing a character as I have ever crossed.
Brook Dickerson
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March 28, 2014
This is a classic! Great characters and hilarious!
1 person found this review helpful
About the author
Daniel Pinkwater has written about one hundred books, many of them good. Lizard Music was almost the first one he wrote, and remains his personal favorite. It is entirely his own work, and the story that it was discovered as a manuscript inserted in a bale of banana leaves, probably to increase the weight, is merely legend, and without foundation in fact.
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