Crazy in Poughkeepsie

The inimitable Daniel Pinkwater (The Big Orange Splot; The Hoboken Chicken Emergency) brings his zany wit and wisdom to a gentle middle-grade adventure following a kid’s off-the-beaten-path journey, featuring an unfocused spiritual guide, a not-quite-dwarf, a graffiti “artist,” a ghost whale, and mystical shenanigans galore.

“A magic that’s not like anyone else’s.” ― Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods

Mick is a good kid, but maybe he can use just a little guidance. But it’s unclear who will be guiding whom, because Mick’s brother came home from Tibet with the self-proclaimed Guru Lumpo Smythe-Finkel and his dog Lhasa ― and then promptly settled both of them in Mick’s bedroom.

The thing about this kind of guru is that he doesn’t seem to know exactly what he’s trying to do. He sure does seem to be hungry, though.

So Mick agrees to something like a quest, roaming the suburbs with the oddest group of misfits: Lumpo and Lhasa; graffiti-fanatic Verne; and Verne’s unusual friend Molly. Molly is a Dwergish girl ― don’t worry if you don’t know what that is yet ― and she seems to be going off the rails a bit. But she knows that she is defniitely not Verne’s girlfriend.

Along the way, the gang will get invited to a rollicking ghost party, consult a very strange little king, and actually discover the truth about Heaven. Or a version of the truth anyway, because in a Daniel Pinkwater tale, the truth is never the slightest bit like what you’re expecting.