From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Teamwork and Secrets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art E. L. Konigsberg's From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) has one of the best concepts of any children's novel and some of the best dialogue between kid siblings to boot. It's a compact, absorbing, funny, moving, and enriching read. It deserves its Newbery Medal. Eleven-year-old (twelve next month) Claudia Kincaid has decided to run away from home for a few reasons: injustice (she has "to both empty the dishwasher and set the table on the same night while her brothers got out of everything"), lack of appreciation (her parents need a lesson in "Claudia appreciation"), and boredom (she's a straight-A student in need of an adventure). She's already figured out her destination, somewhere large, indoors, and beautiful: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. For her companion in absconding she recruits one of her little brothers, Jamie, nine, because he's funny and he's rich; he hordes his weekly allowance and cheats at the card game War with his best friend and so has $24.43. Combined with Claudia's $4.18, they should have enough (in today's money, that would be about seven times more). She flatters him into going with her ("I've picked you to accompany me on the greatest adventure of our mutual lives") and mollifies him when he thinks they should hide out in Central Park instead of the "sissy" Met by appointing him treasurer of their venture. A wrinkle in the above concept is that a rich old woman, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, has written the story we're reading to explain to her lawyer Saxonberg why she's altering her will. What the connection is between the kids and Mrs. Frankweiler and how she came to know about their adventure are secrets she’s in no hurry to divulge. She sprinkles her narrative with acerbic addresses to Saxonberg, taking him to task for instance for having never paid attention to anything other than laws, taxes, and his grandchildren, and hence for never having visited the Met. The details of how the kids take up residence in the Met (how they avoid the staff, where they sleep, how they bathe, what they eat, what they do during the days, etc.) are mostly believable and always fun, and when, early on, they embark on a quest to solve the mystery of the provenance of a beautiful and popular statue of an angel that may have been sculpted by Michelangelo, the novel gains an added depth. Claudia desperately wants to discover the truth behind the statue because she desperately wants to return to her Greenwich home "different" than when she left. For his part, Jamie likes complications, so he's usually game for whatever Claudia wants to do--though being a "tightwad" treasurer he refuses to let her take a bus or a taxi anywhere. Konigsberg incorporates into the book plenty of enticing details of the Met, including its floor plan (some thirty years ago my wife organized our own trip to the museum and its city after reading the novel). And she interests the reader in art with a deft touch for the apt and appealing detail: "(Now, Saxonberg, I must tell you about that Egyptian tomb called a mastaba. It is not a whole one; it is the beginning of one. You can walk into it. You can spend a lot of time in it, or you can spend very little time in it. You can try to read the picture writing on the walls. Or you can read nothing at all. Whether you read or not, whether you spend a lot of time or a little in that piece of Ancient Egypt, you will have changed climate for at least that part of your day.)" Konigsberg is a witty writer, as in this description of an irate Jamie: "He was in no mood to listen to Claudia. He slumped in his seat with his lips pooched out and his eyebrows pulled down on top of his eyes. He looked like a miniature, clean-shaven Neanderthal man." Part of the pleasure of the novel comes from the comical banter between the precocious siblings: "Jamie," she whispered," what's all that racket?" Jamie stopped, and so did the racket. "What racket?" he demanded. "You," she said. "You are the racket. What in the world are you wearing? Chain mail?" "I'm just wearing my usual. Starting from the bottom, I have B. V. D. briefs, size ten, one tee shirt…" "Oh, for goodness' sake, I know all that. What are you wearing that makes so much noise?" "Twenty-four dollars and forty-three cents." "How come all your money is in change? It rattles." "Bruce pays off in pennies and nickels. What did you expect him to pay me in? Traveler's checks?" Despite regularly bickering, the kids bond into a team. They complement each other: "She was cautious (about everything but money); he was adventurous (about everything but money)." And at times they even compliment each other, as when Jamie realizes that the 16th-century bed they commandeer in the Met was the site of a murder. "You know, Claude, for a sister and a fussbudget, you're not too bad" and "You know, Jamie, for a brother and a cheapskate, you're not too bad." Sharing their adventure--being away from home and alone together in the 20 acres of the Met and on the trail of a mystery--makes them come to a new appreciation of each another. Really Jamie and Claudia are a bit too articulate for their ages, as when a surprised guard asks Jamie, "Where did you come from?" and he replies, "Mother always says that I come from Heaven." And when they take to calling each other Sir James and Lady Claudia and assume formal airs (and Jamie says things like, "Where, dear Lady Claudia, dost thou expect to bathe?"), things gets a bit too precious and unconvincing. And Konigsberg reveals one secret too many in the end . . . But it's a great read and should increase the interest of child and adult readers in art, make them appreciate secrets (which “make you different. On the inside where it counts”), and teach them about learning (about letting what you've learned fill you up till it touches every part of you). View all my reviews
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