If Your Kid Loved From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, They’ll Love These 5 Other
Art History Mysteries
by Liz Lesnick
Growing up, my mother would take my brother and me to New York City to visit a museum at least once a month. I used to dread these outings, trudging around looking at pictures for what seemed like hours. Then one day my school librarian recommended that I read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. (I think she overheard me complaining to a friend about an upcoming museum visit.) I devoured the now-classic story about Claudia and Jamie Kincaid, a sister and brother from the suburbs who run away from home to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City where they discover a long-lost sculpture by Michelangelo. I wanted to read more books like it, but sadly, back in the 1970s, I had a hard time finding anything that came close except for another book by E.L. Konigsburg (see below).
Today’s readers are luckier. The art history mystery has become a popular genre. Here are five superb examples for middle-grade readers to savor.
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Chasing Vermeer
When a book of unexplainable occurrences brings 12-year-olds Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay together, strange things start to happen: seemingly unrelated events connect, an eccentric old woman seeks their company, and an invaluable Vermeer painting disappears. Before they know it, they find themselves at the center of an international art scandal. As Petra and Calder are drawn clue by clue into the mystery, they must draw on their intuition, their problem-solving skills, and their knowledge of Vermeer. Balliett’s intricate web strewn with clues, illustrated by Brett Helquist, will keep readers turning the pages until the case is closed.
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Eddie Red Undercover: Mystery on Museum Mile
Sixth-grader Edmund Xavier Lonnrot, code name Eddie Red, has a photographic memory and a talent for drawing anything he sees. When a mastermind art thief stumps the NYPD, Eddie becomes their secret weapon to solve the case, drawing him deeper into New York's famous Museum Mile and closer to a dangerous criminal group known as the Picasso Gang. With page-turning adventure and fun characters, this first installment in the Eddie Red series is a must-read for any fan of puzzles and mystery.
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The Second Mrs. Gioconda
After I finished From the Mixed-Up Files, I couldn’t wait to read another E.L. Konigsburg book. Mrs. Lewis, our children’s librarian with an encyclopedic knowledge of and infallible taste in children’s books, went to the shelves to get me The Second Mrs. Gioconda. Leonardo Da Vinci’s apprentice, Salai, narrates this tale that seeks to answer the age-old question: Who was the real woman with the enigmatic smile?
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The Sixty-Eight Rooms
Available from:Just as many New York City kids share memories of going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Arms & Armor galleries, kids who grow up in Chicago remember visiting the Art Institute and making a beeline for The Thorne Rooms. Located in the museum’s lower level, The Thorne Rooms are a collection of sixty-eight exquisitely crafted miniature rooms. Each room is set in a different historic period, and every detail is perfect. Marianne Malone sets her novel inside the Thorne Rooms. On a field trip to the Art Institute, Ruthie finds a key that allows her to shrink so that she can enter and explore the Thorne rooms. She discovers that she isn’t the first one to make this journey and now she has to return something very important that someone’s left behind.
Learn more about the Thorne Rooms here.Also available from: -
Under the Egg
Available from:I have a hunch that E.L. Konigsburg would have loved Theodora Tenpenny, the heroine of Laura Marx Fitzgerald's Under the Egg. Theo is smart, enterprising, and intrepid (just like Claudia Kincaid). These qualities come in handy as she tries to figure out whether a painting she discovers at her grandfather’s house is a Renaissance masterpiece that may have been stolen from the Metropolitan Museum (where her grandfather had once been a security guard). Theo’s search for the truth shows her parts of Manhattan and her grandfather that she never knew, and introduces her to unconventional new friends who help her learn the value of community.
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