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!

Hilarious, whimsical, rather unrealistic, but still a ton of fun!

My end-of-2008 nostalgia continued with this, a dear childhood favorite, and it's not particularly hard to see why--isn't hiding for a week at the Met and solving a Michelangelo-centered mystery a fantasy of every artistically-minded child? (It certainly was mine.) And in hindsight I can see how much Claudia was in myself at that age, the yearning to "grow up" ASAP, the intense desire to be seen as preternaturally special--isn't it interesting how wrapped up in the pages of a book one sometimes stumbles upon a time capsule of a former self?

"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 of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside of 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."

I very vaguely remember this one from childhood, so I thought why not read it again? It's a fun story about two children who run away and live in an art museum. There's a mystery as well, with them trying to figure out whether or not a new obtained statue was sculpted by Michelangelo himself. Original story, fun for kids.

3.5
Yet another book that would have been magical had I first read it at the proper age. It has moments of wonderfulness (and one of the best premises of any book ever) but the framework is awkward, and the message a little heavy-handed. Still, a great choice as a read aloud for my son who is quite the museum goer (not so much thanks to me -- last year his fourth grade class went on no less than 20 field trips, most of them to art museums, at least three of them to the Met). I enjoyed it on this reading more than I did when I first read it in my twenties, probably because I know both the Met and New York City better now than I did then, and this book is a lovely snapshot as they were 45 years or so ago.

the mc had such a "main-character-complex" like she RAN AWAY WHAT A DRAMATIC CHILD-

Don’t you love discovering little gems by chance, especially from reading other books?

Ever since I read Dash & Lily's Book of Dares back in 2011, I was tempted to find this classic of children’s literature. This year, I finally got a copy and ended up loving it. Konigsburg puts together a charming tale of two siblings who run away from home to go and live in a museum in New York. Brilliant idea! Who wouldn’t want to do that? The story while set in the late 1960s is also timeless, and not what I was expecting. The few illustrations were a surprising bonus.

N.B. I do recommend this particular edition since they have used fabulous Munken paper!

I always felt that I should absolutely love this book, because the idea of running away to live in a museum was enthralling to me. But somehow the book missed something that would have made it more engrossing for me.

I loved this book as a kid. I love this book as an adult. It's purely delightful, and I'm so glad I revisited it.

I'd totally forgotten that this was entirely narrated by Mrs. Frankweiler! She made me think of Helen Mirren a lot. Same sort of no-nonsense aura that Mirren portrays so well.

3 1/2 stars (read as an adult)

I found most of this story to be very pleasant... but I LOVED the ending.

Alright, here we go with another book from my past that was forced down my throat by the bare hands of an english teacher. I hated this book so much that I decided to just not read it and struggle my way through that time of the year.

After arriving to school the morning after i decided that, i panicked! The current chapter that was to be discussed abruptly fell into the lesson plans of the teacher that morning and i began to panick. I glanced around at the obedient students who plucked out their copies of this book from their backpacks and immediately turned to the desired chapter.

I suddenly felt ashamed for being stupid and not at least glazing over the chapter (i was an obedient student at heart...really! i was just getting tired of being forced to read books that didn't interest me).

So i quickly began devising a way to get myself through that day of discussion. I decided upon just excusing myself to the bathroom with my book in my shirt. I remember taking a stall and quickly rummaging through the awful chapter while carefully watching the clock.

Oh I struggled my way through the semester book projects and summer readings. I survived, but barely came through unscathed.

If you are familiar with my other book ratings of books that i hated as a child, then you could probably guess all that i would say about this book. Here are the basics: hated it, don't recommend it, i was young so you never know the true review of this book for i could read it now and actually enjoy it! and then of course the forever mentionings of the evil summer reading and class book projects.

Second reading, 2022: I read this out loud to my fiancé, who had never read it. I couldn’t remember much about it, but I really enjoyed it. It’s smart, funny, and well written. I thought there had been more of a focus on the files themselves, but they don’t come in till the end. I was probably confused as a kid trying to figure out how they were organized.

I've been a reader my whole life, but until fourth grade I was mostly reading Baby Sitter's Club books and the Box Car Children series. My fourth grade teacher knew I could read at a higher level, and the Mixed-Up Files was the first book that she suggested I read. Since then, the book has been a kind of symbol for me, for my love of reading good stories and my true entrance into the world of reading. It was completely unlike anything I'd read before and has probably been one of the most important books in my life.