From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

It was delightful to revisit one of my favorite books from my childhood, this time on audiobook. E. L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was the 1968 Newbery Medal winner, and I've never met a reader who disliked it.

Claudia Kincaid is tired of the boring routine of her life and her family's lack of Claudia Appreciation. She wants adventure... but it has to be comfortable. No roughing it for Lady Claudia! And so she decides to run away from home to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She brings her brother Jamie along for the ride, because he can keep secrets (and also because he is rich, being a confirmed miser at age nine). But soon the adventure becomes more than just a fun flight, as the show more children become engrossed in the mystery of the museum's newest acquisition, a sculpture called Angel. Did Michelangelo sculpt her?

The characters are just so real. I have a friend who swears Claudia is her literary twin—Claudia, with her love for planning and being in control, for fine things and (let's face it) extravagance in money matters. Jamie is quite different, much more practical than his older sister (and much tighter with the purse strings). They interact just like real siblings do, arguments and childish logic and all. Sometimes it's hilarious; other times it's poignant (but never sappy... you just can't get sappy about two characters so pragmatic and realistic as Claudia and Jamie).

The story is narrated by Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who is telling it to "my dear Saxonberg," the children's grandfather who also happens to be Mrs. Frankweiler's lawyer. Her excuse for telling the story is to explain certain changes in her will—but I think she just relished the adventure and the telling thereof more than anything. As a young reader I always knew she was quite a character, but rereading this as an adult gives me a new perspective on her. She reminds me of my grandmother in a lot of ways... a collector of antiquities, with rooms full of treasures and a lifetime of stories, a woman with a practical, humorous, determined outlook on life and relationships. And stubborn!

What Konigsburg does brilliantly is to make the story more than just a fun tale about two kids who run away from home and stay in a museum. They set out to learn everything about the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but end up learning something else, too.

Claudia said, "But, Mrs. Frankweiler, you should want to learn one new thing every day. We did even at the museum."
"No," I answered, "I don't agree with that. I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already inside you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow."

Jan Miner reads this audiobook and her narration is wonderful. Her voice for Jamie is especially good. It's a quick read at just over three hours, and I relished every minute. Highly recommended! show less

This book, which won the Newbery Medal in 1968, is the story of Claudia Kincaid and her younger brother Jamie, and their adventures in New York City when they decide to run away from their Greenwich, Connecticut home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Well, actually it's 12-year-old Claudia who decides to run away – she takes 9-year-old brother Jamie along because "he was good for a laugh" and because he has the amazing sum of twenty-four dollars and forty-three cents saved up, mostly his winnings from gambling on card games.

The two escapees pack their clean undies in their violin and trumpet cases, take the train to New York City, and spend a week living in the Met. They hide from museum guards and workmen, bathe in a museum show more fountain, sleep in antique beds complete with antique bedding and antique dust. They also manage to solve a mystery involving a statue of an angel that may or may not have been sculpted by Michelangelo.

Their story is narrated by the wealthy and aged Mrs. Frankweiler of the title, and she's part of the mystery. She was also my favorite character. Well, how could I not like a woman who keeps a lifetime of newspaper clippings and personal items in "rows and rows of filing cabinets that line the walls" of her private office? She has the soul of a librarian. She also hates beauty parlors and has her butler cut her hair. Now who couldn't fall in love with that?

I'm not going to give away much more of the plot, except to say that Claudia and Jamie eventually go home, and the ending has a couple of very neat surprise twists. And along the way, Claudia learns something very valuable about what you can and can't run away from.

I enjoyed the book very much and would recommend it whole-heartedly to readers of all ages, but I think I missed a lot of the charm it would have held for me if I'd first read it as a child. As an adult, I kept having trouble suspending my disbelief – even in the Olden Days of 1967, two children hiding out in the Metropolitan Museum for a week would have been far-fetched stuff. And I also kept wondering about the poor parents of the runaways: What must they have been going through back in Greenwich while Claudia and Jamie were harvesting coins from the fountain, and eating breakfast every morning at the automat? OK, I know it's fantasy and not to be taken too seriously. But a lot of it felt very real, too, and I think it was that mixture of the real and the decidedly non-real that kept tripping me up.

I also couldn't help noticing how dated a lot of the book seemed. Things have really changed since 1967. How many kids today will know what an automat is? Or a transistor radio? Or an Olivetti typewriter? But in the edition I read, the author herself addresses this problem in an afterword. And she rightly points out that "the events of September 11, 2001, that have changed forever both the conscience and configuration of New York would not have changed Claudia and Jamie. The skyline that they would have seen when they arrived in Manhattan would not have been very different from that which we now (sadly) see." And though she admits that many things have changed since 1967 (including the author herself), one thing Konigsburg says is still true: "the greatest adventure lies not in running away but in looking inside, and the greatest discovery is not in finding out who made a statue but in finding out what makes you."

A slightly expanded version of this review is posted on my blog:
http://jlshall.blogspot.com/2008/01/from-mixed-up-files-of-mrs-basil-e.html show less

Rereading this with my daughter was wonderful! The magic of running away to live in the MET still resonated, but I loved Claudia's journey to understand herself even more than I did as a child. Her exploration of her own motivations will stay with her much longer than her week in the museum. I loved that she and her brother Jamie have such different personalities when it comes to spending money and planning. They are forced to learn how to prioritize and compromise. And Mrs. Frankweiler is just delightful!

A brother and sister run away from home to live for a little while in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While there, they work to solve the mystery of a statue that may or may not have been sculpted by Michelangelo, and end their adventure by meeting the rich and slightly eccentric woman who sold the piece to the museum. A re-read for me, but the first time for Charlie; I *love* this book, mostly because I spent a good deal of my childhood daydreaming about secretly exploring public spaces (museums, bookstores, libraries,...) at night. I think Charlie didn't get caught up in the possibilities as much as I did, but he still enjoyed it.

I have a lot of really important emotional baggage tied up with this book. It was the first work of fiction that I can recall where I didn't just identify with the protagonists, but actively fantasized about doing what they did (there was a Sesame Street TV special around the same time where Big Bird, etc. get stranded overnight at the Met, which probably did not help in this regard).

As a child, New York City, and the Met specifically, were places where we went during visits to my grandparents in New Jersey, and my grandmother in particular is associated with NYC culture for me (theater, museums, concerts, architecture -- the parts more grand than scary). I read this book many dozens of times at her house, and have enjoyed it dozens of show more times since growing up, too.

So, for me, not only is this book a fantastically written story (Konigsberg's best, imho, and I think she's a great author overall) which captures perfectly the intelligent, awkward stubbornness of its main characters, but it also carries my inner idealization of New York City, and the exciting, everything-in-the-world, anything-possible feeling of NYC and of cities in general. show less

This is likely my favorite book, I read it when I was a child and I come back to it, time again. I can hear Konisburg's voice in my head at times. I think of Claudia when I'm planning for a trip and it helps me to realize that this planning is part of the fun. I think of Jamie when I cannot bear to part with an old book or spend money on a new car. The old books and old car I have are just fine, thanks. I loved their adventure, the detail, the cheek, the wit. I hope that kids are still reading this because it certainly broadened my horizons.

I was sucked in right from the start with the hilarious prologue/letter from Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler to her lawyer. Unfortunately, I was under the misapprehension that this was a mystery novel filled with clues and investigating and false leads, and now that I think back, it did have all of these things, but not in the way I was expecting. What it's really about is two children who run away from home to live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, and who fall in love with art history.

This novel is incredibly quirky, charming, and funny, with many great life observations doled out by the 80 year old narrator. (One observation that sticks with me is the idea of the chill in your body that you get when you wake up too early.) show more Occasionally the dialogue feels a little stuffy, with Claudia's 9-year-old brother sounding more like he was older at times, and I wasn't quite convinced that two kids would be as happy as they are hiding out in a museum rather than at home with their families. But I couldn't quite decide if both of these issues I had were actually part of the book's conceit.

Anyway, still an incredibly enjoyable book that I can definitely see readers falling in love with. Just don't expect a huge mystery component. show less