Daniel Manus Pinkwater (born November 15, 1941 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States) is an author of mostly children's books and is an occasional commentator on National Public Radio. He attended Bard College. Well-known books include Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Fat Men from Space, Borgel, and the picture book The Big Orange Splot. His collections of NPR essays (most notably Fish Whistle) explain that many elements of his fiction are based on real events and people he encountered in his youth. Pinkwater is a trained artist and has illustrated many of his books in the past, although for more recent works that task has passed to his wife Jill Pinkwater. His artistic style varies from work to work, with some books illustrated in computer drawings, others in woodcuts and others in Magic Marker. He does not work in any set category. Rather, his work is intended for a wide variety of ages, with books ranging from picture books to adult fiction.
Pinkwater varies his name slightly between books (for instance, "Daniel Pinkwater", "Daniel M. Pinkwater", "Daniel Manus Pinkwater", "D. Manus Pinkwater"). Allegedly, he claims that he does this in order to annoy the librarians who have to catalogue his books. His parents were Jewish and emigrated from Poland before he was born. He describes his father as a "ham-eating, iconoclastic Jew."
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Pinkwater tends to write books about social misfits who find themselves in bizarre situations, such as searching for a floating island populated by human-sized intelligent lizards (Lizard Music), exploring other universes with an obscure relative (Borgel), and discovering that their teeth can function as interstellar radio antennae (Fat Men from Space). They are often, though not always, set in thinly—or not at all—disguised versions of Chicago and Hoboken, New Jersey. He often includes Chicago landmarks and folkloric figures from his childhood in 1950s Chicago, regardless of when the book is set. An example of this is the recurring character the Chicken Man, a mysterious but dignified black man who carries a performing chicken on his head. This character is based on a shadowy figure from 1950s Chicago; after Pinkwater made him a lead character in Lizard Music he received letters from Chicago residents who remembered the Chicken Man. Pinkwater also pays tribute to the Clark (a repertory movie theatre on Clark Street in the Loop that changed features daily and stayed open all night), Bughouse Square, and Ed & Fred's Red Hots. Another common theme is Jewish culture, with many characters speaking in Yiddish-influenced dialogue or participating in Borscht Belt culture (vampires).
In 1995, Pinkwater published his first adult novel, The Afterlife Diet, in which a mediocre editor, upon dying, finds himself in a tacky Catskills resort populated by "circumferentially challenged" deceased.
Pinkwater authored the newspaper comic strip Norb, which was illustrated by Tony Auth. The strip, syndicated by King Features, was cancelled after 52 weeks.[1] The daily strips were released in a 78-page collection by MU Press in 1992.
Pinkwater is also a longtime commentator on National Public Radio. He regularly reviews children's books on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday. For several years, he had his own NPR show, Chinwag Theater. Pinkwater is also known to avid fans of the NPR radio show Car Talk, where he has appeared as a (seemingly) random caller, commenting, for example, on the physics of the buttocks (giving rise to the proposed unit of measure of seat size: the Pinkwater), and giving practical advice as to the choice of automobiles. In the early 1990s Pinkwater voiced a series of humorous radio advertisements for the Ford Motor Company.
Following an appearance by Pinkwater on the Public Radio International program This American Life,[2] his book The Devil in the Drain ended up on challenged book lists at numerous children's libraries.[3]