Claudia Kincaid decides to run away, but she is not the one to run away without a plan, and she is not the one to run to the woods. It is too dirty, too hard, and she has some classy dreams. She decides to take her brother Jamie (yes, she did consider her other brothers, but decided that they are not right for this). And now, with a plan, she tells her brother that they are running away on Wednesday. Why Wednesday? since it is band day, and you will find Claudia's plan enchanting and really smart.
To her luck, or smart choice, she find out that Jamie is rich. He has a lot of money that will help the two of them in the running away plan, She slips an envelope in the snail mail to tell her parents about the running away, and that please they should not worry or call the FBI. And off they go, on their way to New York, to hide in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oh, yeah, this is Claudia Kincaid for you. Hiding in an sixteenth century luxury bed.

The fist half was outstanding. I loved it and it was a true five stars fun and bold. I started liking it a bit less when the two kids got into solving the museum mystery of the angel sculpture. So that part was a bit more 3 stars for me.

Overall, it is a really great book. And it is great to go back to read children's books. Highly recommended. 4 stars.

As a child this was so boring I fell asleep while hearing it read out loud more than once.

Well I've never read an actually good book winning the Newbery Medal and this was no exception. They might as well call it the Mediocre Medal of Children's Literature, (not considering the disturbingly large number of books which don't even live up to that.)

Here's a little sample of why I enjoyed this book so much...

Claudia: 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 in you to swell up inside 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 of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow".


A fun story--great read-aloud with the boys. Of course, I want to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC--and throw coins in the fountain!

My granddaughter liked it, I found it dated and confusing until the end. The spirit of adventure, curiosity, and resourcefulness was what saved the story from just being totally mixed-up.

I enjoyed this one more than the kids, it's an odd little book. The central story does capture the imagination of a child like few can, but the trappings are so fussy and odd. I think the narrative device (the titular Mrs. Frankweiler has a first-person narration) confused the kids, and I don't think they really connected with the themes of secrets and adventure. There are some very complex ideas here. But all those things work beautifully for adults and after you read it as a child all those things fall away and you just remember the magic.

I related to this book as a child, myself the oldest of four children in a house that was too loud for my liking. Claudia is a stickler and so was I. Neither of my children is much like Claudia, though, and it's that specific personality type that is this book's ideal reader.

In fact, I may be this book's ideal reader right now, as an adult who remembers it fondly. On the other hand, the kids loved the stuff about the museum and I wished we still lived close by so they could see it.

An absolutely wonderful book. This is the story of a sister and brother who run away from home because the girl is victim to family injustices. They run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where they encounter The Angel by Michelangelo. I just love the concept of 'coming home lost'. Do yourself a favor and read this and capture the thrill of being twelve years old again.

In The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, A.J. tells his daughter: “The things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.”

I think maybe that was my problem with From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Had I read it as a kid - perhaps in 4th or 5th grade - I think it's very likely that my 10-year-old imagination would have run wild with glee at the thought of running away from home to live in a museum. Perhaps Claudia and Jamie Kincaid would have been my literary heroes.

But at the far more pragmatic age of 41, all I could think as I read this book was how freaking sick with worry!!! their parents must have been after two of their kids disappeared without a trace for an entire week. I know… I'm no fun.

Also… well, I just plain didn't like Claudia. She was an entitled, manipulative, thoroughly self-absorbed little brat. I kept hoping some personal growth on her part might salvage the story in the end, but it was not meant to be. In fact, when confronted with the fact that her family was frantic over her and her brother's disappearance, Claudia's only response was, "But I wrote them a letter!" That was more or less when I gave up and accepted that this would, in all likelihood, be a one-star read. Even the eventual introduction of the titular Basil E. Frankweiler, with her sage insights and poignant perspectives on life and people that appealed to my pragmatically boring self, couldn't sway me, despite being a welcome change from all of Claudia's screeching and a narrative that had otherwise grown rather monotonous. Besides, it all went over Claudia's head anyway. (Jamie, for his part, was more tolerable, if irritatingly precocious for an 8-year-old.)

I read this book aloud to my daughter (age 7) and it seemed as lost on her as it was on me, albeit for different reasons. While she followed the basic plot, some of the subject matter pertaining to art history was a little over her head. Not really an issue since it provided for good discussion; however, she also had trouble following the narrative at times. But honestly? So did I… leading me to believe that perhaps it was an issue of writing style and not reading comprehension skills. She gave it two stars.

Then again, give it a few more years and she may respond differently.

Wow, I haven't been this uncomfortable about two related family members bathing naked together since Out Stealing Horses.

Wither.

Why? Why would the author write a scene of a prepubescent 12-year-old sister frolicking naked in a bath with her 9-year-old brother?

I'm three years older than my brother, and when I was 12, I can promise you, I would have been far more inclined to hold his head underwater for five minutes than I would have been to stand naked before him, splashing him.

Come on now. Make it stop.

I turned to my resident 12-year-old after the first mutual bath scene, to check in on her thoughts of the sibling bath, and she contributed one word: revolting.

And what's with the old lady narrator, interrupting the narrative flow with her nonsensical comments and weird flirts to the old man lawyer, “Saxonberg?” Get a room you two, and gross.

The title? What, because for five minutes there's a scene near some file cabinets? How about Night at the Museum? It was 1967 when this was published, and that title was still up for grabs.

How about the frantic parents, whose kids decided to “disappear” on them, wondering, for a week, if two of their children had been abducted by murderers? My stomach hurt so badly at the prospect of these parents not knowing if their kids were alive, it made me despise both of the selfish brats. Their excuses for running away were pathetic at best, and I couldn't be humored in any way at how the parents must have suffered from their antics.

From where I'm sitting, this is a book, like Harriet the Spy that you've got to fall in love with when you're young, otherwise the plot points are just too weird to swallow down, as an adult.

Three stars for some memorable lines and a strong narrative (albeit one with a horny old woman interrupting it at every turn).

A book I’d throw into the categories of “Book With Titles that are Better than the Actual Story” and “Books with Plot Summaries that are Better than the Actual Story”.

I grew impatient with this book. Why did Claudia want to run away? If it was her family that was the problem, why did she take one of her brothers along? She picked the Metropolitan Museum of Art as her refuge, but she didn’t seem to enjoy much of the art there. The whole story is written as if Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is telling it to her lawyer, but we don’t really see Mrs. F well and the lawyer doesn’t seem that interested in the story. The resolution of the story seemed too easy (Mrs. F already had a document that solved the mystery). Claudia and her brother seem oblivious to the pain and fear they have inflicted on their parents. And for what? A rather unsatisfying week spent in a museum? What was it Claudia wanted? To be a celebrity? To be recognized? I honestly can’t believe the document Mrs. F promised Claudia would satisfy her in those ways.

This is the sixth time I have had my students read this novel. It is on the "5th grade" list here in the Boise district, but I have used it with 6th graders, as well. Though it was written in 1969, it still has a cool plot (brother & sister hide out in the Metropolitan Museum) and my students always love it! It has lots of humor and all students can relate to the sibling arguments. Not an easy read though. Lots of references to things my students don't understand: typewriters, carbon copies, and eating at an automat. There's also the city vs. suburb thing. The characters are buying train fare, city bus and subway tokens - most of my students have only ridden their bikes to places nearby. It's even great for discussing narrative point-of-view, since this book is supposed to be the voice of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler writing to her lawyer about these kids. So you can see where this might be confusing for some students. Also good for any history or art connections to the Renaissance.

Finished reading this to the fam and we all liked it a lot but maybe the girl liked it best. But this is a Newbery-award winner, and sometimes those committees do get it right, this is a great book about adventure, risk-taking, secrets, developing intellectual curiosity. . . and art. Pretty funny, too. I read this decades ago when I was their age, and you get curious about whether the old classics hold up, and I have to say this one does! A classic worth that designation! Highly recommend!