Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl, by Daniel Pinkwater, Houghton Mifflin, $16, ages 9-12, 288 pages. In this wacky-fun followup to Pinkwater's The Neddiad and The Yggyssey, Big Audrey says good-bye to her L.A. friends Iggy, Neddie and Seamus, and the shaman Crazy Wig, and embarks on a quest of self-discovery that will have you devouring Pinkwater's words as if they were candy. Through a chain of wildly entertaining and serendipitous encounters, Big Audrey, a 14-year-old girl with cat whiskers, gets closer to solving her parents' disappearance -- a mystery she hadn't even thought about solving until a telepathic loony in Poughkeepsie named Molly read her mind and told her she should. With the help of Molly and a sacred stick, Big Audrey finds her true self and dances her way into understanding what she's looking for. Along the way, she jumps into another plane of existence and runs into other colorful characters who reach out to her the moment they meet her. Among them, a loco Marlon Brando who gives her a ride -- as he drums bongos, and downs cakes and carrot juice --, and a Vassar professor who divides his time between teaching classes and going crazy.
