The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee StewartLittle, Brown and Company (Hachette), 2012

I didn’t even know there was a prequel to the Mysterious Benedict Society books, until I happened to be looking at books in Target while waiting for my boyfriend to finish his shopping. Clearly, once I knew about it, I had to read it: I really liked the rest of the books in the series, which feature the exploits and adventures of four very smart orphans. This book is about the childhood of Nicholas Benedict, whose adulthood we see in the other books: he brings the orphans together, and we know he was an orphan himself. but here we actually get to see a formative episode of his life. At the start of the book, Nicholas, age 9, is headed to the latest in a string of orphanages: his parents died when he was just a baby, and he’s lived in orphanages ever since. Nicholas is incredibly smart, incredibly observant, and has an unfortunately large nose and narcolepsy, which means he tends to get picked on by other kids. The new orphanage, known as the Manor, is actually called “Rothschild’s End—or ‘Child’s End, as it is often abbreviated”—which should give you a taste of this book’s variety of humor (4). ‘Child’s End has money woes, strict but fair staff, and three nasty bullies called the Spiders; it also has, supposedly, a hidden treasure—the inheritance of Mrs. Rothschild, the wife of the Manor’s former owner. Nicholas learns about the treasure, realizes that the orphanage’s director is trying to find it, and sets out to find it first himself: in the course of trying to do so, he learns more about himself and other people than he would have expected, and it’s sweet to watch Nicholas learn about generosity, about using his intelligence to benefit others as well as himself. (That sounds more smarmy than it comes across in the book, I think.) The book really picked up for me about halfway through, as Nicholas makes friends and the story becomes about the friends as a group, rather than just Nicholas by himself: the way Stewart depicts friendships and group dynamics are a big part of the appeal of the rest of the series, and I liked when that same kind of energy came into play in this book. I probably would have appreciated this book more if I’d re-read the rest of the series first: I read the other books in 2007, 2008, and 2009, and I’m sure I missed things in this book because it’s been so long. (For example: this review on Goodreads points out that this book shows the origin of the grown-up Mr. Benedict’s “passion for green plaid”—oh! Totally! How did I not think of that?)