The Neddiad, by Daniel Pinkwater

The Neddiad
Daniel Pinkwater
HoughtonMifflin, 2007
200 p. 10-14+y.

One part Holes, two parts Guy Noir, one part Tom Robbins, all Pinkwater. This book makes me feel like I just walked out of an old Nickelodeon after a Saturday afternoon marathon surrounded by rowdy kids and spitballs. I slowly rise/unstick from my seat still mentally replaying the final episode of "The Neddiad", which, interestingly, is how this book was born - in installments. Daniel Pinkwater, NPR commentator and children's book reviewer extraordinaire, gave us weekly chapters of Neddie Wentworthstein and his amazing adventures on trains, planes and automobiles starting back in the summer of 2006. As I started reading this book I vaguely remembered an NPR interview back in October about a train and a boy hanging out with his movie star idol D'Artagnan (aka Dart-Onion, aka Aaron Finn). I listened in and out and couldn't help but be reminded of another NPR staple A Prairie Home Companion's Guy Noir; I could almost hear the sound effects of the rattling rails and stomping feet. This is that book.

The gumshoe, Captain Billy's Whizbang feeling settles in by chapter 17 (very short chapters, remember? weekly installments?). By this time we've met the shoelace mogul Mr. Wentworthstein (a more happy-go-lucky version of Stanley Yelnats's splooge-inventing father), Mrs. Wentworthstein, the sister Eloise (one of two stellar and highly underrated young female characters), Aaron Finn, his son and Neddie's bud Seamus Finn, the turtle-gifting Melvin/Irving/Sheldon/whoever, Billy the Phantom Bellboy (who wins my never-before-bestowed award of going from the character I thought most unbelievable to my favorite) and of course, the bad guys - Sandor Eucalyptus and Sholmos Bunyip (you can almost hear the twisting handlebar moustaches). These are our players, running around Los Angeles in the 1940s trying to save the world with a turtle.

From the back cover:
"Neddie Wentworthstein is the guy with the turtle. Sandor Eucalyptus is the guy with the jellybean. Sholmos Bunyip wants the turtle ... and he'll stop at nothing to get it."

This is such a great book not only in its own right but as a safe, gratifying recommendation to ANYONE. I am always appreciative of a book about which I can get excited to read and to share without adding a disclaimer (another such treat is The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick). Give The Neddiad to upper elementary- to middle-schoolers and any other student with a sense of humor.

Fun fact about Bryn: I love surprises and to be really scared (this will relate to the book eventually, I promise). I'm a sucker for Stephen King and thriller movies. Not the gore, just the rush. I like them because it's rare that I actually get surprised or scared and appreciate it moreso when it happens. So, of course one of my favorite aspects of The Neddiad is that I counted at least a handful of moments where I actually gasped out loud, not because it was scary, but because I was completely taken by surprise. So many twists and turns. Pinkwater totally got me and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I could go on and on about the cool train lingo I learned, when Chief Crazy Wig chants about "walla walla bing bang" and "no child left behind", the shout-out to Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer (a can of which my dad is sporting in a photo taken hours before I was born!) and Eloise and Iggy (two rockin' gals, necessarily overshadowed by the male characters).

Read this book and decide for yourself if it's an overactive imagination or Neddies all the way down. I mean, even Pinkwater's not telling!

If you like this, check out:
um, the million and one other fantabulous books Pinkwater's written