Jules, Penny, and the Rooster is a new book from Daniel Pinkwater, from Tachyon. They've published his last couple of novels - Adventures of a Dwergish Girl and Crazy in Poughkeepsie, both excellent - and it is wonderful to see a somewhat regular publication schedule from Pinkwater these days.
(My personal theory - based on nothing but his publication dates and a long-running love for his books - is that Pinkwater is just too weird for most publishing companies to be comfortable with in the long run. So they do a three-book deal, or something, and then run back to boring books about kids who eat their Wheaties and have some kind of trendy Problems to entice the award-givers once they realize just how individual and wonderful Pinkwater's work is.)
(It's not what you might call a well-developed theory.)
Anyway - new Pinkwater book!
Jules is a middle-school girl, who has been promised by her parents ("My father has an excellent job in the deluxe shoelace industry, and my mother is a house plant psychiatrist[.]") that they would get a job once the family moved out of an apartment to a house where dogs were allowed.
You guessed it: they have made that move, and still no dog. Jules is somewhat peeved.
So she enters a newspaper contest: the best letter will win a purebred collie dog. As I understand it, she wins the contest, names the dog Penny...and then, when the two start exploring the neighborhood together, they discover the usual Pinkwaterian weirdness happening on the other side of an old stone wall.
It's being published March 11th, and I doubt I'll manage to wait that long to read it. Consider that a recommendation.
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