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A review by saidtheraina
The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization by Daniel Pinkwater
3.0
TBCD
What a strange book. It felt like a combination of the classic "Growing up in the early 20th century" memoir, an episodic adventure-roadtrip story, and Runaways. This kid comes from an eccentric family (shoelace entrepreneurs), who is moving from Chicago to LA. Along the way, he meets a ghost, becomes stranded from his family, starts a road trip with a movie star, sees the grand canyon, and procures a turtle, which turns out to be the key to the world's status quo survival. Somewhere in there it gets sci-fi, and all along the way there are historical tidbits and screwball comedic portions.
Read by the author, who I don't think is a particularly good reader, except that he read the whole adventure in a very deadpan way which made everything seem that much more absurd. The kid explains in the book that he always expected to grow up to have adventures, so everything seems entirely ordinary.
Definitely worth a listen. Trying to figure out a booktalking strategy.
What a strange book. It felt like a combination of the classic "Growing up in the early 20th century" memoir, an episodic adventure-roadtrip story, and Runaways. This kid comes from an eccentric family (shoelace entrepreneurs), who is moving from Chicago to LA. Along the way, he meets a ghost, becomes stranded from his family, starts a road trip with a movie star, sees the grand canyon, and procures a turtle, which turns out to be the key to the world's status quo survival. Somewhere in there it gets sci-fi, and all along the way there are historical tidbits and screwball comedic portions.
Read by the author, who I don't think is a particularly good reader, except that he read the whole adventure in a very deadpan way which made everything seem that much more absurd. The kid explains in the book that he always expected to grow up to have adventures, so everything seems entirely ordinary.
Definitely worth a listen. Trying to figure out a booktalking strategy.