Susie and Anonymous

November 22, 2004

Dear Mr. Pinkwater,

I was in our local library in Montreal, Canada, searching for some good audio cassettes for my 10-year-old son when your reading of “Borgel” caught my eye. Not really knowing what to expect you can’t imagine our delight upon listening to (alas) the excerpts of this hilarious book. In fact, we were immediately able to recognize your voice as we have a series of taped Jewish stories for children (One People Many Stories) where we must assume you read and perhaps authored “Wampires” since we heard you say “Sunny boy” with your inimitable accent from The Old Country. We are now reading aloud the remaining chapters of “Borgel” but I do a lousy impression of an old Jewish person (even though we have a few family members who belong in this category).

We are writing this note of appreciation for your zany sense of humour as well as to strongly recommend to you to listen to the very comical children’s story (but funny for grown-ups too) by James and Debra Howe entitled ” Bunnicula” and read by (my favourite Borscht-belt comedian) Lou Jacobi. It is priceless and we know you”ll appreciate Howe’s sense of humour.

This is the first time we have EVER written to an author and we sincerely hope you get this message and hope you will let us know if you get the tape of “Bunnicula”.

With lots of warm feelings, Susie and anonymous

I have often explained that the audio version of Borgel was supposed to be the whole book, and I recorded the whole book, but the tape publisher received the wrong boxes, with space for only one cassette, so they just put out one cassette's worth. That company went out of business, (big surprise), and whoever is offering the tape now doesn't have the right to do so, and the whole thing left me with a bad taste in my mouth. But I like very much the idea that you are reading the rest of the book aloud. Family readings are much better than listening to commercial tapes. My older sister read to me, even past the point where I didn't need her to do it any more, and that is probably how I learned to write. Keep reading--you can even make your own tapes.