From: Karin Snelson <ksnelson>
Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 17:30:05 -0700

This just in from Daniel Pinkwater himself... (He says hello.)

-I get comparatively few letters which allude to humor in my books. Usually when a kid is especially hipped on the funny stuff s/he sends me a funny letter--usually pretty darn funny. They seldom say,
"Your book was funny," or "I laughed a lot." Of course, they did. I did too, when I wrote it. But the point of the books is not to get a laugh--that's just part of the excursion. In the writing, I throw out stuff that's so funny it bends me double and makes my eyes squirt. Joke books, books that are merely meant to be funny, bore me. I'm much more interested in aspects of the story, characters, language, and strange resonances I can get going that make the book tolerable even through repeated readings. Someone said that my humor isn't for everyone. That's absolutely correct. I have the very best readers there are, and I respect them, even look up to them. What's more, I've been at this long enough that I have readers who started with me as kids and are now adults--and still my readers, and really swell people. It would be a shame to give them something ordinary.

This, which just came in yesterday, is a pretty typical fan letter.


HUMMINGRK at aol.com wrote:


-Karin Snelson Senior Editor, Children?s Books and Teens Amazon.com Union Station 2 705 5th Avenue South Seattle, WA 98104
(206) 266!29 http://www.amazon.com/childrens http://www.amazon.com/teens
Received on Fri 03 May 2002 07:30:05 PM CDT