Executive VP Brenna is here today to talk about memory and the story of a beloved children’s book:

I can remember many nights, late — like after 10 p.m. — when I would slink along the very edge of the hallway from my bedroom (where the floor didn’t creak) to see if I could get to a door without my mom noticing. (And yes, my mom reads this newsletter, and so I’m about to find out how often she just ignored me.) The front door stood in view of the living room, where “LA Law” or something was on the TV. I got as far as touching the front door, my resentment with the unfairness of doing the dishes and the other indignities of being 9 years old taking me that far, but no farther. I never ran away from home; I lived in a cul-de-sac in Rapid City — where would I even go?

In this era of my life I found the book “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler,” and immediately escaped into it. Claudia — a mature 12 — has determined that her life is full of injustice (and perhaps boredom), and makes a plan to find new digs. She even takes a brother along (I would not have taken my little brother; not only was he about 4 when I was most longing to be elsewhere, but I was busy being a bitter middle child). The key to her plan, and the book, is Claudia’s epiphany on the first page of the first chapter: “She decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere. To a large place, a comfortable place, an indoor place, and preferably a beautiful place. And that’s why she decided upon the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.”

This is a children’s novel in the most perfect way, in that Claudia and Jaime not only successfully execute their plan to decamp to and camp out in the museum, but there are essentially no adult characters to speak of — only the titular Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who is the narrator. (This story will be given a file, you see.) The kids solve the logistical issues of living in a museum (sleeping in an antique bed, violin case stuffed with socks and underwear stored in a sarcophagus, basic hygiene and income needs seen to at the fountain) and solve a mystery about an angel sculpture, to boot.

Author E.L. Konigsburg based the story on her own experience of taking her kids to the museum; it was also based on picnics with the kids whining about the amenities, which convinced her that her own offspring would never hack it in an inelegant environment. She had a degree in chemistry as a first-generation college student in Pittsburgh, and shortly pursued a graduate degree, but when she and her husband moved to Jacksonville, Florida, she became a science teacher for a short time before being a full-time parent. When her oldest son was 7, the family moved to Port Chester, New York, and she began writing while her kids went to school. On Saturdays, she had an art class in the city, and let the kids roam the museum while she sketched.

Her debut novel, “Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth,” received the Newbery runner-up honor in 1968, the same year that “From the Mixed-Up Files…” won the award. Konigsburg is the only author to ever achieve that dual literary feat — and with her first two books!

In 1973, an adaptation of the book with Ingrid Bergman as Mrs. Frankweiler, called “The Hideaways”, became the first feature film ever shot inside the Met. (ABC also made a TV movie version with Lauren Bacall in 1995, which I’m kind of shocked I didn’t know about, as I was watching a lot of TV in 1995.) Upon Konigsburg’s death in 2013, the museum held a memorial service for her, and created this video tour based on the book.

Konigsburg’s approach to storytelling was shaped by her own childhood in Pennsylvania, as well as having been a parent and teacher. She told Scholastic Teachers that, no matter the economic status or race of a kid, "The essential problems remain the same. The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both."

From a distance of a few decades, I can see that my young self was trying to get caught escaping, wanting to be noticed and wanting to disappear at the same time. One of the most excellent things about the mystery that Claudia solves in the book, only possible with the help of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, is that the knowing is the prize. Claudia couldn’t return home until she was different, which of course makes one’s home a little different, too.