Julie Jacobs

April 26, 2007

Post #2220 – 20070426

Dear Mr. Pinkwater,

Thanks for your reading voice, the ratatouille recipe, the picture of Lulu on the website, your appearance on the “Fat” documentary, your piece on dyscalculia, the fact that you shared your book chapter by chapter on the website — and for your books, too, including the Captain Underpants ones, if you are, in fact, Dav.

You have told lots of people that you didn’t want to read their unpublished manuscripts so you could have a life, which I understand, so I didn’t send the book when it was unpublished. You have told other people to ask their publishers to send you their books — at the publishers’ expense, which cracked me up — so I did. But I haven’t figured out what happens next.

The folks at Albert Whitman & Co. said they sent you a copy of “My Heart Is A Magic House.” What did you think of it?

Thanks so much for your time, if you do choose to respond,

Julie

Daniel replies:

OK, first of all, I am not Dav! I am sure he is a very nice fellow, never mind he can't spell his own first name. But I am not him. Next, it is true I cannot read or comment on unpublished manuscripts for several good reasons. Because I do the occasional book-talk on NPR, and have a column about books in Wonder Time magazine, I receive a couple thousand published books to look at every year. I go through all these looking for distinguished ones for the radio program and the column. If I were to start telling individual authors what I thought of their individual books, well you see how that would be. So let me make an all-purpose statement: Writing a book is a good thing. And if it finds a publisher, that is very good, and hard to bring off. If you wrote it, it's safe to assume you like it, and if you like it it's safe to assume that some other(s) will like it too. So congratulations, Julie Jacobs. I hope many people like your book, and that you write many more. (Besides, my opinion is no better than anyone else's--I just happen to be mildly famous).