O frabjous day! Daniel Pinkwater has put most of the text of his news kids' book The Yggyssey: How Iggy Wondered What Happened to All the Ghosts, Found Out Where They Went, and Went There online, along with audio of him reading the first chapter.
Pinkwater may be my single most favorite writer in the entire world — he's certainly the writer who had the biggest impact on me, through novels like "Alan Medelsohn, the Boy From Mars," collected in his 5 Novels omnibus. Mr Pinkwater, if you're reading this, I owe you one. I owe you several.
And I can't wait to read this book!
When I got home from school, my room was full of ghosts…_again!_ They were being invisible, but I could feel the cold spots in the air.
"Did I speak to you ectoplasms about this, or did I not?" I asked the empty room.
Silence. The ghosts were dummying up.
"Rudolph Valentino! I can smell your lousy cigar!"
There was a faint smell of cigar smoke, the trademark of the ghostly Valentino, so I knew he was among them. And my bedspread was rumpled. Probably they were sitting on my bed, playing cards.
"Look, you spectres–this is a young girl's bedroom, not a club! Why do you have to hang out here all the time? You have an eight-story hotel to haunt. There's a complete apartment reserved for your personal use. Why don't you stay there? It's the nicest one in the whole building."
MP3 link to Pinkwater reading chapter one
(via Neil Gaiman)