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353rd out of 451 books
—
463 voters
Lizard Music
When his parents go away for two weeks, Victor goes on his own vacation-right at home! Now he can stay up as late as he wants and watch his favorite television shows! After the late, late show one night, something strange happens. A band of lizards appears on the screen, playing the most outrageous music Victor has ever heard. They're not in the TV listings, but every nigh...more
Paperback, 144 pages
Published
January 29th 1996
by Yearling
(first published 1976)
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I received this book as a birthday or Christmas gift from my parents when I was a child. We lived in kind of an isolated area, and I couldn't get to the library whenever I wanted, so needless to say I read this book a LOT. I got kind of obsessed with it around 5th grade, not just for the great story, but because I thought the rockin' lizards on the cover were TOTALLY BADASSSSSS!
Lizard Music is a hilarious adventure about a young teenager who is left alone when his parents go out of town. His fri...more
Lizard Music is a hilarious adventure about a young teenager who is left alone when his parents go out of town. His fri...more
You have not actually lived until you have read this book, in part because the Chicken Man is a necessary and essential guru for true life, and in part because you must learn to find the Lizard Music that is permeating the airwaves all around you when you stay up too late at night, but most of all because truly living most definitely involves absorbing the worldview of Daniel Manus Pinkwater. If you disagree, but cannot articulate why, then you are, I am sorry to say, existing in a soulless void...more
I am not sure why, but when looking through the Children’s Department of a bookstore a couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to read this book. Perhaps it caught my attention because when I saw it, it had been newly published in a gorgeous jacket featuring a black and white hand-cut woodblock picture with red binding tape as part of the New York Review Children’s Collection. I didn’t act on my wish to read it and gift it to a nephew until a friend recently revealed he, too, read children’s boo...more
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This was a very strange book about a kid seeing a weird lizard band on TV late at night and trying to find him. With the help of the Chicken Man (a creepy black man with a chicken on his head) he does.
The beginning of the book was quite magical in a surreal, 70s-flashback sort of way. Ten-year-old Victor has the house to himself for a whole week, so what's he going to do? Watch the CBS Evening News, with Walter Cronkite substitute Roger Mudd, make model airplanes, cook TV dinners in the oven, an...more
The beginning of the book was quite magical in a surreal, 70s-flashback sort of way. Ten-year-old Victor has the house to himself for a whole week, so what's he going to do? Watch the CBS Evening News, with Walter Cronkite substitute Roger Mudd, make model airplanes, cook TV dinners in the oven, an...more
Instead of a current YA novel I reached back to 1976 to find a novel to read and review: Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music. My first impression is that the book captures the groovy "anything is possible vibe" of the 1970s. I was 8 years-old in 1976 and playing with my Evil Knievel Stunt Bike while Steve Jobs was busy launching Apple. The Concord flew, an Oil Crisis emerged, and Jimmy Carter became the President. Lizard Music doesn't mention any of it, but the whole feel of the novel was very nosta...more
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This was a notable early entry in the sci fi genre for ages 11-13, and with a title like that, I had to look into it. It was a trip down nostalgia lane (published 1975) but it's probably too dated for today's middle schoolers. The story is told in the first person, by a boy who manages to enjoy a couple of weeks with the house to himself one summer. I laughed at the main character's fascination with TV news--he knows all the quirks of the news anchors of the day, and goes into news-geeky detail...more
I really enjoyed hearing this book read to me (by my brother) while driving here and there in the car. It reminded me of how I was a child, always waiting (hoping) that something interesting would eventually happen to me. When I was a kid I had really big plans (dreams) for the future which usually included something rather bizarre and completely impossible. But, one thing that my kid self always had was time, these amazing things were obviously going to happen to me in the future. I had to be '...more
I really enjoyed this book as a kid, but its been more than a decade since I read it last. It was probably among the first fiction books I read, so I was curious to see what it was like and perhaps bring back some of the memories of my childhood. My impressions were of a very unique story featuring aspects of daily life intruded on by a wacky storyline involving a civilization of chicken-revering, wise and peaceful lizards inhabiting a secret island. When Victor, a young boy stumbles upon myster...more
Dec 08, 2008
Jess
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Someone with a kicky sense of humor, lovers of Walter Cronkite & lizards
Recommended to Jess by:
Fantasy Syllabus
Victor's left home alone after his folks go on vacation and his hippie older sister ditches him for camping. Then the Chicken Man and lizards start popping up everywhere.
Wow, what an odd and occasionally delightful book. It's weird and strange and sometimes really, really funny. Victor is pretty much fantastic. How can you not love a character who spends entire paragraphs describing bad tv movie plots or wondering how Roger Mudd might handle/announce Walter Cronkite being trapped underwater in a...more
Wow, what an odd and occasionally delightful book. It's weird and strange and sometimes really, really funny. Victor is pretty much fantastic. How can you not love a character who spends entire paragraphs describing bad tv movie plots or wondering how Roger Mudd might handle/announce Walter Cronkite being trapped underwater in a...more
This was one weird book. In classic Pinkwater style, it's bizzare and outrageous, and there are moments where it's truly hilarious. It isn't always laugh-out-loud funny, but it's always amuzing. Pinkwater has this unique comedic voice that he uses - it's hard to describe exactly, but part of it is that he presents all the madness in a very matter-of-fact way. For example, the main character ends up in this secret city of super-intelligent lizards, and in the city he finds a fountain: "In the mid...more
Not quite as good, in my opinion, as Pinkwater's "Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy From Mars" Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy From Mars, Lizard Music is still one of Pinkwater's best. The author is brilliant at taking us gradually from "normal" to completely bizarre, while somehow making the transition so smooth we hardly notice the trip until we've arrived.
I suppose what made this novel somewhat less entertaining for me than Alan Mendelsohn was that it was a little more obvious that something strange was goi...more
I suppose what made this novel somewhat less entertaining for me than Alan Mendelsohn was that it was a little more obvious that something strange was goi...more
I've read Lizard Music a couple of times before, and seen the stage version that Lifeline Theater did in 1997. This time I was listening to an audio version, read by the author, which you can download for free from pinkwater.com. A friend, recalling some of Daniel Pinkwater's NPR appearances, said that to listen to his voice for two and a half hours might kill her. And it's true that it's a gravely voice. But I just get so caught up in Victor's adventures alone in a thinly-disguised Chicago. The...more
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As posted on Outside of a Dog:
I've read some strange books in my time. There's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which was not nearly as weird as it could have been), the Hitchhiker's canon, The True Meaning of Smekday (a personal favorite of mine), etc. I like strange. It makes a welcome change from the everyday, every once and a while. But I have never in my life read anything as wondrously strange as Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music.
I'll admit this is my first Pinkwater title, though I've had a...more
I've read some strange books in my time. There's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which was not nearly as weird as it could have been), the Hitchhiker's canon, The True Meaning of Smekday (a personal favorite of mine), etc. I like strange. It makes a welcome change from the everyday, every once and a while. But I have never in my life read anything as wondrously strange as Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music.
I'll admit this is my first Pinkwater title, though I've had a...more
Pinkwater's stuff is easy to like, and Lizard Music is no exception. One of the blurbs on the back of the book says that "Pinkwater writes books for smart kids" and that is a good assessment. All of his main characters are just slightly off-center. His novel "Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death" was a favorite of mine when I was in middle school, but I was never able to find other stuff written by him at the time. Now I am slowly working my way through other Pinkwater novels.
Lizard Music is...more
Lizard Music is...more
There were some amusing aspects of the story, which is why it gets two stars, but ultimately it just felt kind of pointless. There was a lot of buildup, followed by a relatively brief and unsatisfying resolution. I wanted to know more about the lizards, and what happened to everyone. I should also note for anyone thinking about reading this with their kids that this is going to feel pretty dated-- the young protagonist keeps talking about how awesome Walter Cronkite is, for instance, and while t...more
Feb 14, 2011
Daniel Lambert
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Anyone
Recommended to Daniel by:
Mel Gilden
A wonderful children's book about a boy who embarks upon an adventure after accidentally tuning in to a mysterious broadcast on his television set.
Pinkwater's children's books appeal to many adults as well. This is because of the fascinating subjects that he addresses in his books, as well as the allusions that he scatters throughout his stories like Easter eggs.
Anyone with an interest in the following subjects will enjoy Pinkwater's "children's" fiction: conspiracy theories, Sherlock Holmes, s...more
Pinkwater's children's books appeal to many adults as well. This is because of the fascinating subjects that he addresses in his books, as well as the allusions that he scatters throughout his stories like Easter eggs.
Anyone with an interest in the following subjects will enjoy Pinkwater's "children's" fiction: conspiracy theories, Sherlock Holmes, s...more
Warning: this rating and review based on severe nostalgia.
One of my all-time favorite young adult books. Weird, funny and creepy all at the same time. Victor the first-person protagonist is an incredibly identifiable character. My favorite moment is when he becomes so overwhelmed with his discovery of the lizards, The Chicken Man and the pod people, his mixture of fear, excitement, and his love of the beautiful lesser kudu he saw at the zoo that he weeps uncontrollably. Pinkwater's wandering ima...more
One of my all-time favorite young adult books. Weird, funny and creepy all at the same time. Victor the first-person protagonist is an incredibly identifiable character. My favorite moment is when he becomes so overwhelmed with his discovery of the lizards, The Chicken Man and the pod people, his mixture of fear, excitement, and his love of the beautiful lesser kudu he saw at the zoo that he weeps uncontrollably. Pinkwater's wandering ima...more
Victor's parents go on vacation leaving him in the hands of his crazy sister Leslie who splits the cash their parents left with Victor and takes off to Cape Cod with her hippie friends. Left alone Victor scarfs down TV dinners and pizza with anchovies, watches Walter Cronkite news, and stays up for the late, late movie. One night after the late movie he sees a lizard band playing some modern jazz and a weird lizard game show where everyone wears duck masks. Shortly thereafter Victor meets an old...more
Daniel Pinkwater is awesome. This one is pure win with some really memorable lizard (and chicken man) characters. Booktalk below.
Lizard Music, by Daniel Pinkwater
Victor and Leslie’s parents needed a summer vacation. They left Leslie in charge for a week or two while they went to work on their relationship, or something. Even though Leslie was 17 and Victor almost 12, their parents left nearly every phone number in McDonnaldsville taped to the wall in case of emergency. They should have just tape...more
Lizard Music, by Daniel Pinkwater
Victor and Leslie’s parents needed a summer vacation. They left Leslie in charge for a week or two while they went to work on their relationship, or something. Even though Leslie was 17 and Victor almost 12, their parents left nearly every phone number in McDonnaldsville taped to the wall in case of emergency. They should have just tape...more
This was a reread for me, and I usually don't bother reviewing those. But the last time I read it, my age could be measured in single digits, so let's just say it was a different experience the second time around. *g* I loved Pinkwater's stuff in general growing up, but this was my introduction to him, so it will always occupy a very special place in my heart. If you like children's books with quirky goings-on narrated by smart and geeky protagonists, I would strongly recommend this one.
Bonkers late 70's kids book about a lad that gets left home alone while his parents go on holiday. While staying up late watching telly he sees a bunch of lizards playing music as if they were people. Wanting to see more he checks the tv listings but cannot find any details about them. With the help of a local madman called The Chicken Man, who keeps a hen under his hat, they go on a journey to Thunderbolt City to try and find out who these lizards are.
Mental but good.
Mental but good.
A re-release form the late 70s.
I am not sure if kids today will have any idea who Walter Cronkite is but aside from that and a little dated language this book is basically an acid trip of a fantasy for kids.
Made me think back to being a kid in the 70s and realizing that there was a general surreal cultural component that permeated life, even in the burbs. I mean the Electric Company was a little crazy, no? This is like that with talking, lizard jazz musicians.
I am not sure if kids today will have any idea who Walter Cronkite is but aside from that and a little dated language this book is basically an acid trip of a fantasy for kids.
Made me think back to being a kid in the 70s and realizing that there was a general surreal cultural component that permeated life, even in the burbs. I mean the Electric Company was a little crazy, no? This is like that with talking, lizard jazz musicians.
Interesting, that's about all I can say. I had heard rave reviews about this story. And it was interesting, who wouldn't like alien lizards and the chicken man. The idea of staying home on my own at 11 would have freaked me out, but isn't that every kids dream on a certain level? I knew it would be an unusual book as only Pinkwater can write them, and I wasn't disappointed there. Still leaves me rubbing my chin wih that thoughtful expression going, "hmmmm".
What can I say? There is not logical reason to like this book but I loved it. It is so off-the-wall. A boy discovers a lizard civilization where all the male lizards are named Raymond and the females named (I don't remember what they're named--it has been a while) and they all worship Walter Cronkite. Only Daniel Pinkwater could had written such a book. Don't miss the Adventure of the Snarkout boys or Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars. Waka Waka!
Ok, of all the books I professed to love growing up, this was the first one where I remembered huge swaths of dialog and even sentence structure. So I must have really loved this book. Here's why I think I loved it so much.
1. Parents abandon child. I totally wanted this to happen to me. All my favorite childhood books follow this theme (ie. Homecoming, Island of the Blue Dolphins, A Wrinkle in Time).
2. The protag, Victor, has a really matter-of-fact way of observing things that I found funny, an...more
1. Parents abandon child. I totally wanted this to happen to me. All my favorite childhood books follow this theme (ie. Homecoming, Island of the Blue Dolphins, A Wrinkle in Time).
2. The protag, Victor, has a really matter-of-fact way of observing things that I found funny, an...more
ကြ်န္ေတာ္ဒီစာအုပ္ဖတ္ဖို ့အသက္အရမ္းၾကီးသြားျပီလို ့ပဲထင္မိပါတယ္။ Pinkwater ရဲ ့ကြ်န္ေတာ္အၾကိဳက္ဆံုးစာအုပ္က Cat Whiskered Girl ပါ။ အဲဒီေနာက္ပိုင္းကြ်န္ေတာ္သူ ့စာအုပ္တစ္အုပ္ႏွစ္အုပ္ထပ္ဖတ္ပါေသးတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ပဲစာအုပ္ဖတ္တာေတြတျဖည္းျဖည္းမ်ားမ်ားလာလို ့လား သူ ့အေရးအသားကပဲအရမ္းရိုးလြန္းလို ့လားမသိပါ။ေနာက္ပိုင္းထပ္ဖတ္တဲ့စာအုပ္ေတြတစ္အုပ္မွမၾကိဳက္ေတာ့ပါဘူး။ ပံုျပင္ဆန္ဆန္အေရးအသားနဲ ့ လူၾကီးေတြလည္းဖတ္လို ့ရတဲ့ Patrick Ness ရဲ ့ The Monster Calls, Ramsom Gigg ရဲ ့Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children စတဲ...more
I read this book many times as a kid. It's weird and funny. It's not action adventure, but the random plot of secret lizard bands floating on an invisible island in Lake Michigan is great.
5-26-10 Just read it again. It's dated, but in my opinion holds up better than a lot of other stuff from the 70's. The protagonist's obsession with Walter Cronkite and late news is funny I think, but modern kids wouldn't get it.
The kid tries smoking once when his parents are away and hates it. There was a tim...more
5-26-10 Just read it again. It's dated, but in my opinion holds up better than a lot of other stuff from the 70's. The protagonist's obsession with Walter Cronkite and late news is funny I think, but modern kids wouldn't get it.
The kid tries smoking once when his parents are away and hates it. There was a tim...more
I would have loved this book as a kid but as an adult reader I need something a little more. This book felt like a first draft -- full of interesting, imaginative ideas and fun characters, but the dots don't quite connect up into a story that means anything. There's nothing really at stake for our hero, so the book remains a pleasant tour of the surreal but doesn't really satisfy on a gut level. The slow pace and lack of conflict don't help matters.
I remember getting this at the school book fair when I was little -- maybe 8 or so? I loved every minute with it and then something happened and it disappeared after I read it. I felt like the whole book had been a dream. Many years later I heard Daniel Pinkwater reading a story on NPR and immediately the story came rushing back. Very fond childhood reading memories there.
I read this as a kid and now I'm reading it again and I can see what 10-year-old me loved about it. It's smart and funny, kind of far out there and imaginative. I think it would probably be a little dated for today's kids, but not to the point where it wouldn't be entertaining. A super-easy read, I flew through it as an adult and it was a fun story.
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Daniel Manus Pinkwater 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. Pinkwater has also illustrated many of his books in the past, although for more recent works that...more
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“Chickens have an uncanny sense of direction.”
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