This is just like Pinkwater’s middle school classmate, fictionalized as Alan Mendelsohn, who caused an uproar by proclaiming to everyone that he is a Martian.

Students across the state are still scratching their heads over an absurd state test question about a talking pineapple.

… Where kids are asked questions about the Pinkwater fable “The Hare and the Pineapple”. (a re-editing of the Pinkwater fable “The Rabbit and the Eggplant”.  Apparently the test-masters didn’t want the kids to get confused in not knowing what eggplant is.)

Daniel Pinkwater: “Nonsense topped upon Nonsense“.

Responding to 8th Grade complaint that he is a sell-out.

Boing Boing: Absurdist kids’ literature hero Daniel Pinkwater is at the center of an appropriately absurd kerfuffle.

Pinkwater Controversy erupts on Standardized Test Question about Borgel.

“Flunks the test of Common Sense”

When Pineapple Races Hare, Students Lose.:
A reading passage included this week in one of New York’s standardized English tests has become the talk of the eighth grade, with students walking around saying, “Pineapples don’t have sleeves,” as if it were the code for admission to a secret society. […]

While the furor over the test passage seems to have achieved phenomenal proportions in New York — one boy has already posted a picture on his Facebook page of a T-shirt with the motto “Pineapples Don’t Have Sleeves” — it has caused similar ripples across the country.

Sheesh.
But students and educators were divided over whether the passage, which is a parody of the “Tortoise and Hare” fable, is amusing or disturbing.
“It was kind of funny and a little weird,” said one student.
“That article about the pineapple and the hare was stupid and absurd,” said another.

NPR story.

More commentary.

If ever there was a reason to pull a stop on standardized testing mania, it’s this story.

From the mouth of babes: “What the heck,” my kids wanted to know “was Daniel Pinkwater doing writing about a hare and a pineapple? Everybody knows the story is supposed to be about an eggplant.”

Ken Jennings: ) In fact, it reads like one of those random, fill-in-the-blank “Mad Libs” stories that seven-year-olds annoy everyone with on family vacations. A ninja and toothpaste? What does that even mean?

Sigh.

Laughing My @$$ off.

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