By Witney Seibold

Copyright slashfilm

“Lizard Music,” published in 1976, is about a 10-year-old boy named Victor who is left alone at home for a week. His parents are off on a marriage rebuilding retreat, and his annoying teenage sister is going to be shacking up with a boyfriend. It was published at a time when this kind of neglect was common, so Victor will be fine. Also, Pinkwater understands that kids make the best discoveries when left to their own devices, so he frequently writes tales of kids who are far away from adult supervision.

Victor is a weird, nerdy kid who loves Walter Cronkite and late-night television. Without supervision, he stays up super late watching TV and falls asleep during an after-hours movie. When he awakens, he sees an eerie new TV show about lizards playing musical instruments. He assumes it was a dream, but then he begins to see evidence around town that the lizard show was real. He even befriends a local eccentric, the Chicken Man, and they investigate the lizard show together. In time, the pair discover that a species of intelligent reptiles — all named Reynold — resides on a mysterious, mist-shrouded island just off the coast of New Jersey.

All of this is presented as wholly matter-of-fact by Pinkwater. He’s a very down-to-earth author, and his descriptions of oddball things feel natural and fascinating. Pinkwater is merely imaginative. One could never accuse him of following authorial trends.

Other hit Pinkwater books include 1979’s “Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars,” 1990’s “Borgel,” and two sequels to “The Hoboken Chicken Emergency” titled “Looking for Bobowicz” and “The Artsy-Smartsy Club” (both published in 2006). Pinkwater previously wrote about his early ambitions to become an artist in his 1991 autobiography “Chicago Days, Hoboken Nights,” and “Artsy-Smarty” seems to be based on the artistic principles he learned in school. Kids should be more creative, he’s argued.