Crazy in Poughkeepsie

Daniel Pinkwater's Crazy in Poughkeepsie is a wonderfully odd, funny adventure for 10 year olds about a boy who comes home from camp to find a guru living in his bedroom.

What happens

Mick has just had the best two weeks of his life at Camp Hakawakaha (the lake has mostly dried up, but never mind). He walks into his room to find a little old man on the spare bed and a shaggy dog drooling on his.

It's all his big brother Maurice's doing. Maurice went to the Himalayas to find a mystical guru, just like the one in his favourite comic. He came back with Guru Lumpo Smythe-Finkel, who grew up in New Jersey, loves old jazz and watches golf on TV with Dad.

Meditation turns out to be monstrously boring, so Maurice begs Mick to take the Guru off his hands.

What follows is a long, strange wander around Poughkeepsie. The Guru never takes the same route twice. Snakes lift their heads to watch him go by. Strangers come out with grilled cheese sandwiches for his dog, Lhasa. He's looking for something, and he'll know it when he finds it.

Then Mick's gloomy friend from camp, Vern, turns up with Molly. She sleeps in a tree, says she could buy a mansion if she wanted, and can hear ghosts partying in an old factory (with a ghost whale called Luna!).

This is Pinkwater, so it's all told completely deadpan. Mick is a dry, sensible narrator who takes the weirdest things in his stride. Half the fun is his little tangents about kibble, cough-drop factories and his mum's plastic furniture covers.

It's very American, with its fish sticks and summer camp and a 1958 Buick, and it's in no hurry at all. If your reader wants a plot that races along, it might feel slow. If they love a funny voice and a world where anything could be round the next corner, they'll adore it.

Vern and Molly do go through a spell of being self-declared juvenile delinquents. They wake the neighbours, try to pinch a porch chair, and Vern mentions they've been drinking wine. It's played for laughs and it doesn't last, but it's there.

What to read next

For a very different camp where the lake dried up long ago, try Louis Sachar's Holes. Stanley's family blame everything on a no-good great-great-grandfather, and his camp is a much tougher place than Hakawakaha.