Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
All readers hope for in a book. Humor, suspense, intrigue and their problems acknowledged seriously, but not somberly.
Amazon.com Review
After reading this book, I guarantee that you will never visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art (or any wonderful, old cavern of a museum) without sneaking into the bathrooms to look for Claudia and her brother Jamie. They're standing on the toilets, still, hiding until the museum closes and their adventure begins. Such is the impact of timeless novels . . . they never leave us. E. L. Konigsburg won the 1967 Newbery Medal for this tale of how Claudia and her brother run away to the museum in order to teach their parents a lesson. Little do they know that mystery awaits!
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Customer Reviews: Read 307 more reviews...
 Just ew November 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had to read this in 5th grade and it was torture throughout. The story was good but the way it was written gave no true human reactions and it was a normal book with a weird displaced mistery put into it.
 From the Mixed-Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler November 23, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I received 8 of 10 individual orders of this used novel within a few days and the other two before the deadline. The quality of the novels was overall good - perfect covers and very slight yellowing. I had one query from a vendor for which I received a prompt reply from the vendor and from Amazon. I'm very satisfied.
 If I'd Read This Book Forty Years Ago... November 23, 2008
As I child I would have wanted to be Claudia: brave enough to run away, worldly enough to live in a museum, and smart enough to figure out the "cupid" mystery. But having read it only a few days ago, as an adult, I'd like to have written some of lines author E.L. Konigsburg attributed to her narrator Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Here are two examples:
"Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around."
"...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."
Note: Find a new edition that contains Ms. Konigsburg's Afterword. You'll like her discussion of things around and in the museum that have change, or stayed the same, since she wrote the book.
Still good after all these years October 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I feel funny reviewing books that are older than I am (this was published in 1967), but I will share what I thought. I thought this was a cute story, and I don't know how I missed this one when I was young...it seems like it would have been just my style! And, except for a few details (such as how much things cost and the fact that Claudia wears a petticoat), it doesn't feel like it's outdated. I thought a couple of parts were particularly funny, like when Claudia and Jamie find an unopened candy bar on the ground, and Jamie wants to eat it. Claudia says "You better not touch it. It's probably poisoned or filled with marijuana, so you'll eat it and become either dead or a dope addict." How funny!
A proper mystery! October 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I think you have to be a kid or a kid at heart to properly understand the magic of this book. What kid did not dream of running away? Here is a girl, a very practical girl, who makes that dream come true. She and her younger brother create an elaborate plan to run away and hide in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Remember, this was written before huge advancements in security. As they live an awesome life in a museum, they allow themselves to become part of a possible mystery.
This is an exciting and smartly-written book that manages to laugh at itself and his characters while still making you love everyone connected to this clever story.
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