Pluralistic: Daniel Pinkwater's "Jules, Penny and the Rooster" (11 Mar 2025)


Today's links


The cover for the Tachyon edition of Daniel Pinkwater's 'Jules, Penny and the Rooster.'

Daniel Pinkwater's "Jules, Penny and the Rooster" (permalink)

"Cult author" is a maddeningly imprecise term – it might mean, "writer whose readers are a small but devoted band," or it might mean "writer whose readers are transformed forever by their work, so that they never see the world in the same way again."

That latter sense is what I mean when I call Daniel Pinkwater a "cult author." Pinkwater has written more than 100 books and has reached a vast audience, and those books are so singular, so utterly fantastic that when one Pinkwater fan meets another, they immediately launch into ecstatic raptures about these extraordinary works.

Pinkwater writes all kinds of books: memoir, picture books, middle-grades titles, young adult novels, extremely adult novels that appear to be young adult novels, and one of the classic works on dog-training (which I read, even though I don't own a dog and never plan on owning a dog) (it was great):

https://pinkwater.com/book/superpuppy-how-to-choose-raise-and-train-the-best-possible-dog-for-you/

Pinkwater has a new book out. It's great. Of course it's great. It's called Jules, Penny and the Rooster and it's nominally a middle-grades book, and while it will certainly delight the kids in your life, I ate it up:

https://tachyonpublications.com/product/jules-penny-the-rooster/

Jules and her family have just moved to a suburb called Bayberry Acres in the sleepy dormitory city of Turtle Neck and now she's having a pretty rotten summer. She misses all her friends back in the city, her grumpy bassoon-obsessed sister broke her finger and it staying home all summer watching old movies and hogging the TV instead of going to bassoon camp, and all the other kids in Bayberry Acres are literal babies, which may pay off in babysitting gigs, but makes for a lonely existence for Jules.

Worst of all: Jules's parents always promised that she could get a dog when they eventually moved out of their little apartment and bought a house with a yard in the suburbs, and now that this has come to pass, they're reneging. They say that all they promised was that they would "talk about getting a dog" after moving, and that "no, we're not getting a dog" constitutes "talking about it," and that settles the matter. Jules knows that what's really going on is that her parents have bought all new furniture and rugs and they're worried the dog will mess or chew on these. Jules loves her parents, but when she gets her own place, she's a) definitely getting a dog, and b) not allowing her parents to visit, because they might mess or chew on her furniture.

All that changes when Jules enters an essay contest in the local newspaper to win a collie (a contest she enters without telling her parents, natch) and wins – coming home from a visit to see her beloved aunt back in the old neighborhood to find her finger-nursing, oboe-obsessed big sister in possession of her new dog. After Jules and her sister do some fast talking to bring their parents around, Jules's summer – and her life in the suburbs – are rescued from a summer of lonely doldrums.

Jules names the collie Penny, and they go for long rambles in the mysterious woods that Bayberry Acres were carved out of. It's on one of these walks that they meet the rooster, a handsome, proud, friendly fellow who lures Penny over the stone wall that demarcates the property line ringing the spooky, abandoned mansion/castle at the center of the woods. Jules chases Penny over the wall, and that's when everything changes.

On the other side of that wall is a faun, and little leprechaun-looking guys, and a witch (who turns out to be a high-school chum of her city-dwelling, super-cool aunt), and there's a beast in a hidden dilapidated castle. After Jules sternly informs the beast that she's far too young to be anyone's girlfriend – not even a potentially enchanted prince living as a beast in a hidden castle – he disabuses her of this notion and tells her that she is definitely the long-prophesied savior of the woods, whose magic has been leaking out over years. Jules is pretty sure she's not the savior of anything, but the beast and the witch are very persuasive, and besides, the prophecy predicts that the girl who saves the woods will be in company of a magic wolf (Penny's no wolf, but close enough?) and a rooster. So maybe she is the savior?

This is where Pinkwater really whips the old weird/delightful plotting into gear, introducing a series of great, funny, quirky characters who all seem to know each other (a surprising number were in the same high-school as Jules's aunt), along with some spectacular, mouth-watering meals, beautifully drawn animal-human friendships, and more magical beings than you can shake a stick at.

The story of how Jules recovers the lost artifact that will save the woods' magic is just a perfect, delicious ice-cream cone of narrative, with sprinkles, that you want to share with a friend (rarely have I more keenly regretted that my kid is now a teen and past our old bedtime story ritual). As I wrote in my blurb:

"The purest expression of Pinkwater's unique ability to blend the absurd and the human and make the fantastic normal and the normal fantastic. I laughed long and hard, and turned the final page with that unmissable Pinkwatertovian sense of satisfied wonder."

I am so happy to be a fully subscribed member to the Pinkwater Cult (I've got the Martian space potato to prove it).

Hey look at this (permalink)


A Wayback Machine banner.

Object permanence (permalink)

#15yrsago Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking copyright https://memex.craphound.com/2010/03/12/leaked-uk-record-industry-memo-sets-out-plans-for-breaking-copyright/

#15yrsago US census infographics from 1870 http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?9thcensus

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#1yrago Your car spies on you and rats you out to insurance companies https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
    https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

  • Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

  • Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

  • Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It https://craphound.com/news/2025/02/26/with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshittification-conquered-the-21st-century-and-how-we-can-overthrow-it/

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