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

First published: 1967; illustrated

Type of work: Moral tale

Themes: Coming-of-age, family, emotions, and friendship

Time of work: The 1960’s

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Greenwich, Connecticut; New York City; and Farmington, Connecticut

Principal Characters:

• Claudia Kincaid, a sixth-grade girl who decides to run away from home to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Jamie Kincaid, her brother, “a gambler and a tightwad,” who accompanies Claudia to New York
• Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a wealthy woman who knows the secret of a statue she sold to the Metropolitan Museum, a statue that might have been sculpted by Michelangelo
• Saxonberg, Mrs. Frankweiler’s attorney and Claudia’s grandfather

The Story

Claudia Kincaid’s extraordinary rite of passage begins with her rather ordinary feeling that her family does not appreciate her. A sixth-grader and a good student, she resents the fact that her life at home has not changed the way she thinks it should, that her privileges and her allowance have not expanded to accommodate her growing maturity. She is tired of fighting the same old fights about which television program to watch or who must take care of her baby brother. Like many eleven-year-olds, Claudia decides to solve her problems by running away from home, but unlike most, she acts on her plan. Claudia decides on a new home—the Metropolitan Museum of Art in nearby New York City—and she sets out to make her plan a reality.

An independent girl, Claudia nevertheless knows her own strengths and weaknesses, so she realizes that she must recruit her younger brother Jamie, a third-grader, as an accomplice. Claudia’s principal weakness is money—she is careful about everything but money. Jamie, on the other hand, is careful about nothing but money. Together, the two make an effective team, even though, like most brothers and sisters, they give the impression that they cannot stand each other. Their mutual distaste fades, however, in the face of the task at hand: to escape from Greenwich, infiltrate the Metropolitan, and evade capture.

Once in the museum, Claudia and Jamie must cooperate even more closely, since they have only each other. They find ways to cope, as each contributes to the well-being of the team. The greatest challenge to their teamwork comes when they discover “Angel,” a two-foot-tall statue that might have been sculpted by the famous Renaissance artist Michelangelo. The museum had acquired the statue in an auction for the price of $225, but if it proves to be Michelangelo’s missing angel, it would be worth $2,250,000, a statistic that impresses Jamie almost as much as the mystery appeals to Claudia.

The two siblings set out to solve Angel’s mystery, a process that takes them through the museum at night and into the New York Public Library by day. Ultimately, however, they realize that only one person might know the truth about Angel—Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the woman who had put the statue up for auction in the first place. Pooling the last of their money, Claudia and Jamie travel to Mrs. Frankweiler’s estate in Farmington, Connecticut, in a last-ditch effort to solve the mystery of Angel. There they meet Mrs. Frankweiler, an elderly widow who has much in common with each child: Like Jamie, she is a tightwad who sometimes cheats at cards, though never when the stakes are high; like Claudia, she values secrets above money.

After some negotiation, Mrs. Frankweiler makes a deal with Claudia and Jamie: She will tell them the secret of Michelangelo’s Angel if they will tell her the story of their running away. Only there is one catch: Angel’s secret is buried in a file in one of Mrs. Frankweiler’s many filing cabinets, and her filing system is as eccentric as she is. Setting a time limit of one hour, Mrs. Frankweiler leaves the two to their work. Once again circumstances challenge Claudia and Jamie to act as a team, and once again they rise to the occasion, finding the correct folder just as the hour expires. Now they share Mrs. Frankweiler’s secret, and she shares theirs, but both sides have an assurance that the other will treat the secrets with respect. Mrs. Frankweiler decides to leave the proof that Michelangelo sculpted Angel to Jamie and Claudia in her will, on condition that they keep the secret until Mrs. Frankweiler is dead. In return, Mrs. Frankweiler obtains the children’s narrative for her collection and for one other purpose: She will send a copy to Saxonberg, her attorney and the children’s grandfather, and from the teasing tone of her asides, the reader knows that she has further plans for him that have little to do with the law.

This deal allows Claudia to return home as a different person, a person with a secret that will last, a person who knows that her real worth is on the inside, not the outside. Jamie learns to be careful—his slip of the tongue almost costs the children their access to the secret—and he discovers, from Mrs. Frankweiler’s example, that some things are simply too important to be treated lightly. Mrs. Frankweiler finds in Claudia and Jamie kindred spirits, but she also finds a way out of her self-made trap, a way to reenter the world.

Context

With this novel and one entitled Jennifer, Hecate, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, E. L. Konigsburg’s career as a writer of books for young adults had an auspicious beginning; both were published in 1967, and while From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler won the Newbery Medal, the other won honorable mention for the award. Her secret in these and her other novels seems to be her ability to create real children with authentic-sounding stories. Claudia and Jamie are ordinary children whose interests are those that children their age have in common, but Konigsburg’s characters go a bit over the line, as Claudia does by not only conceiving of running away but actually doing it.

This tendency to view the unreal as merely an extension of the real gives Konigsburg’s work a Dickensian flavor, reminiscent of Great Expectations (1861) or Oliver Twist (1838), though her narratives, complex as they may be, are much simpler and more straightforward. The point, however, is that her fiction has a similar range. It interests young children because she tells interesting stories well; it appeals to older children for that reason, too, and because the characters are real enough to identify with; and her books are suitable for adults because there are levels of complexity in the stories that allow the perceptive reader to recognize the psychological validity of Konigsburg’s characters.