Daniel Manus Pinkwater (born November 15, 1941 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States) is an author of mostly children's books and is an occasional commentator on National Public Radio. He attended Bard College. Well-known books include Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Fat Men from Space, Borgel, and the picture book The Big Orange Splot.

His collections of NPR essays (most notably Fish Whistle) explain that many elements of his fiction are based on real events and people he encountered in his youth. Pinkwater is a trained artist and has illustrated many of his books in the past, although for more recent works that task has passed to his wife Jill Pinkwater. His artistic style varies from work to work, with some books illustrated in computer drawings, others in woodcuts and others in Magic Marker.

He does not work in any set category, rather his work is intended for a wide variety of ages from picture books to adult fiction. Pinkwater varies his name slightly between books ("Daniel Pinkwater", "Daniel M. Pinkwater", "Daniel Manus Pinkwater", "D.

Manus Pinkwater", etc.); allegedly, he claims that he does this in order to annoy the librarians who have to catalogue his books. His parents were Jewish and emigrated from Poland before he was born; he describes his father as "a sport" and a "ham-eating, iconoclastic Jew." Pinkwater tends to write books about (frequently obese) social misfits who find themselves in bizarre situations, such as searching for a floating island populated by human-sized intelligent lizards (Lizard Music), exploring other universes with an obscure relative (Borgel), and discovering that their teeth can function as interstellar radio antennae (Fat Men from Space). They are often, though not always, set in thinly—or not at all—disguised versions of Chicago and Hoboken, New Jersey.

He often includes Chicago landmarks and folkloric figures from his childhood in 1950's Chicago, regardless of when the book is set. An example of this is the recurring character the Chicken Man, a mysterious but dignified black man who carries a performing chicken on his head. This character is based on a shadowy figure from 1950's Chicago; after Pinkwater made him a lead character in Lizard Music he received letters from Chicago residents who remembered the Chicken Man.

Pinkwater also pays tribute to the Clark (a movie theatre on Clark Street), Bughouse Square, and Ed & Fred's Red Hots. Another common theme is Jewish culture, with many characters speaking in Yiddish-influenced dialogue or participating in Borsht Belt culture (Wempires).

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