From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
by E. L. Konigsburg
Summary
Frustrated with what she considers the injustice and monotony of life as the oldest, most responsible child in her suburban Connecticut family, eleven year old Claudia Kincaid plans a runaway with military precision, choosing her frugal, nine year old younger brother Jamie as her accomplice mainly because he has saved enough allowance to fund the trip. The two take a commuter train into New York City and hide inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sleeping in an antique Renaissance bed each night, bathing in the museum's fountain, and dodging guards by blending into school tour groups during the day. Their attention fixes on a small marble angel statue the museum has just acquired for a strikingly low price, possibly a lost work by Michelangelo, and Claudia becomes determined to solve the mystery of the sculpture's origin before the runaway ends, since she wants to go home having actually changed, not merely having escaped for a while. Their research leads them to Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler, the wealthy, eccentric elderly woman who sold the museum the statue, and at her Connecticut estate she finally shows them her private files and admits the truth about the sculpture's authorship, striking a bargain that they keep her secret during her lifetime in exchange for a place in her will and a ride home from her own chauffeur. Claudia realizes what she actually wanted from the runaway was never comfort but a secret of her own to hold onto, and the book closes with her carrying exactly that home.
Reading it moves briskly and with real wit, narrated after the fact by Mrs Frankweiler herself in a dry, knowing voice addressed to her lawyer, and its museum setting is rendered with enough specific, accurate detail that generations of children have tried sleeping arrangements of their own inspired directly by Claudia and Jamie's. It is short, funny, and satisfying in a way that rewards a reader's own curiosity as much as Claudia's.
Historical Context & Significance
Atheneum published From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler in 1967, and the American Library Association gave E. L. Konigsburg the 1968 Newbery Medal over three honor books, Scott O'Dell's The Black Pearl, Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Fearsome Inn, and Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Egypt Game. In the same ceremony, Konigsburg's other 1967 novel, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, was named a Newbery Honor Book, making her the only author in the medal's history to win the Medal and an Honor for two different books in the same year.
Kirkus Reviews predicted correctly that there would be a run on the book, and Horn Book Magazine called it one of the most original stories in years. It has stayed continuously in print for more than five decades, was adapted twice for the screen, as a 1973 feature film directed by Fielder Cook with Ingrid Bergman as Mrs Frankweiler and as a 1995 television film starring Lauren Bacall, and remains a starting point for many children's own fantasies about spending a night inside a museum, an idea few books before it had made feel so plausible.