I read and loved From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler as a kid, and I’m happy to report that it definitely stands up to an adult re-read, one in which I feel like the things that stuck out to me are different from the ones that stuck out when I read it as a child. The book starts with a letter from one Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, of Farmington, Connecticut, to her lawyer, to explain a change she wants made to her will. But then the story shifts to Claudia and Jamie Kincaid, a pair of siblings from Greenwich. Claudia, who is nearly twelve and is the oldest of four kids (and the only girl) has decided she’s fed up of her ordinary home and school life, and particularly of the way she feels like she’s taken for granted. She’s decided she wants an adventure, so she’s decided to run away, and to invite her brother Jamie, who’s nine, to come along. But she doesn’t like being cold or uncomfortable, so she’s chosen to run to someplace warm and dry: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
I’d forgotten just how sweet and smart and funny this book is. The pieces I remembered most, from reading it as a kid, were the parts about the running away itself, and the museum mystery that ensues: I remembered Claudia’s preparations, and how she and Jamie hid at the museum, and how they found themselves trying to figure out if a newly-acquired statue, which might have been carved by Michelangelo, actually was done by him. (It’s the statue that brings them to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: the statue used to be hers, until she sold it at an auction and the museum acquired it for a bargain price.) But I’d forgotten, or never fully appreciated, the parts about how Claudia and Jamie come to feel like a team, or about how Claudia is starting to figure out who she is and what interests and motivates her, outside of her role as her parents’ dutiful daughter. (I love this: “Becoming a team didn’t mean the end of their arguments. But it did mean that the arguments became a part of the adventure, became discussions not threats” (39).) Also, I definitely have more of an appreciation for the bits of humor and observation about NYC. Like this: “Her mother’s Mah-Jong club ladies called it the city. Most of them never ventured there; it was exhausting and it made them nervous” (7). Or this: “If you think of doing something in New York City, you can be certain that at least two thousand other people have that same thought. And of the two thousand who do, about one thousand will be standing in line waiting to do it” (50). There’s also a great passage that talks about the different kinds of people that Claudia and Jamie see at the Met on a Wednesday afternoon, from art students to older women passing time before a Broadway matinee.
I also love this bit of wisdom from Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler herself, when she’s telling Claudia that at the age of 82, she doesn’t feel a need to learn something new every day, and that she actually isn’t sure that’s such a good idea in general:
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 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. (153)
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