[Book Reviews] ‘Lizard Music’ by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
"Lizard Music" by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
Note: Today’s book is also available as a free audiobook for download, read by the author. It’s worth listening to, and great for car trips! Get it here.
Rounding out my trilogy of Pinkwater reviews is a book called Lizard Music. This isn’t to say I’m going to stop reviewing Pinkwater books; it is to say, however, that I’m going to move on to other authors for awhile and come back to Pinkwater books down the road. Plus, Lizard Music is probably one of his best.
The story is about Victor, a twelve-year-old boy who is left home alone when his parents take a vacation and his older sister sneaks out to go camping with her hippie friends. This suits Victor just fine; he’s smart enough to take care of himself, and has plenty of money and TV dinners to get him through solitude. Plus, this means he can watch TV, explore the local city, and go swimming whenever he wants.
When Victor stays up late one night, he sees a band of lizards playing music on his set. He’s pretty sure this isn’t supposed to happen. As the days go by, he sees more weird lizard shows on TV. He also starts seeing lizards everywhere, in connection with all sorts of strange things. He asks a local eccentric known as “The Chicken Man” to help him find the lizards. The two eventually wind up on an island where a large number of friendly, humanoid lizards are living, and Victor has an incredible adventure as he explores their civilization.
There is no villain in this book, and no sense of doom or destiny or anything like that. It’s somewhat of an adventure, somewhat of a coming-of-age story, and somewhat of a hero’s journey all wrapped into one. Victor’s conflict is in understanding who he really is, and why he’s special compared to other people. He begins the story as a normal person who is surrounded by a lot of people who seem crazy. He emerges as someone who is equally as eccentric, but who understands the reasons why someone might be a little different.
When I read this book as a kid, I enjoyed the journey. It didn’t always make a lot of sense to me — there are a lot of dated references to popular culture from the 1970s in the book, particularly in Victor’s obsession with news anchor Walter Cronkite — but I got the gist of what was going on. One of the best running gags in the book is when Victor stays up and watches a movie about pod people (people who have been eaten and replaced by alien plants that look just like them), and reasons that all of the people around him must be pod people as well, because there’s a certain unreality to the way they behave. The lizards confirm his theory, and tell them they’re at war with the pod people. The gag never develops into anything tangible — Pinkwater may have been holding it back for a sequel — but one gets the sense that part of the story’s deeper meaning is that Victor is protecting himself from becoming a pod person by becoming a friend of the lizards. In other words, Victor is giving up the lifestyle of trying to blend in, and taking on the persona of the misfit.
Misfits are really important in Pinkwater books, and I can only assume that his goal in writing books for children was to let them know that being unusual, eccentric, or even crazy is OK, and even preferable to being dull and trying to fit in with the popular kids. Lizard Music is one of those books that really rewards the hero for being curious and willing to accept new ideas… and it challenges the reader to think about the world a little differently as well.
If I have a complaint, it’s that the end of the book is a little hurried, as if Pinkwater meant to spend longer having Victor tour the island, but ran out of time. The Lizards are too nice, and too friendly, and there’s no conflict other than the ticking timer that indicates that Victor will eventually have to leave. There is an interesting little subplot about chickens, but it hatches (hah!) into something fairly unexciting, despite the fact that the lizards themselves are very excited about it.
While this book is intended for children, I’d recommend it for adults as well. The free audio book is a really fantastic listen, and great for a car trip.
GENRE: Magical Realism / Fantasy
STORY: *** 1/2
CHARACTERS: ****
CONCEPT: ****
RE-READABILITY: ****
Book Reviews | SeanJJordan | 
July 4, 2009 10:31 pm
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By Izgad, July 5, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
Awesome book!
I read it when I was in grade school.
By Mallie, July 13, 2009 @ 4:43 pm
Fantastic book! Read it in elementary school, and then read everything else by Pinkwater I could find.
Recently found out it’s being made into a movie. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out!