E.L. Konigsburg

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg is the only author to have both won the Newbery Award (for 1968’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) and been the runner-up (for Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth) in the same year. Both awards are richly deserved, as is her second Newbery Medal (for 1997’s The View From Saturday). My favorite Konigsburg book will always be From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a charmingly bizarre book about two children running away to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I don’t know how difficult it will be for children who have grown up in a world where every public space has a dazzlingly sophisticated security system to swallow the idea of two kids camping out at the Met, but if you can get over a few startling anachronisms this book is a 20th century classic.

Aftertaste:
None.

Availability:
Everywhere, and worth the price of a good copy.

Other Recommendations:
Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle