'From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler'

I remember loving this book in 4th grade.

I didn't camp out, but when I went on a theater trip to NYC I made sure I had lunch in the restaurant with the fountain.

Another fond memory of this book.

Loved this book.

I loved this book, and also Harriet the Spy which also takes place in Manhattan. As a native NYer I’ve always loved books that take place here.

I loved this book.

So happy somebody dragged it out.

It made me dream of boldly seeking independence as a little boy. I think it’s a book for a different, pre-digital age though, sadly.

The 1973 film with Ingrid Bergman in the title role.

YThrte was aYV version with Lauren Bacall as Mrs. Basil E. I like all of Konigsberg’s books. She started out as a chemistry teacher!

Oh this was my favorite book during my grade school years. Big flashbacks.

Never knew of these movies. Are they good?

I think I know what I’m doing tonight!

I remember loving this book, essentially the idea of camping out at the Met. I always dreamed of having a great museum to myself.

[quote]a TV version with Lauren Bacall.

Where she served High Point coffee to the children after dinner.

LOVED it too!

I loved the movie Career Opportunities too. There was always something fascinating about what happened in places at night.

(sort of like how it was exciting to go to your school for some function and then run around looking in the locked classroom windows at night.)

[quote]I like all of Konigsberg’s books. She started out as a chemistry teacher!

I really liked "(((george)))," which was about a boy with multiple personality disorder. And "About the B'nai Bagels," where a Jewish housewife manages her son's Little League team.

The Lauren Bacall version (full of FLAVAH) is free on the Tubi streaming platform. (I LIKE that!)

This book and its sequel were another rainy day escape. Introduced me to the various types of antique furniture.

I'll wait till Tuesday Morning to view it with my coffee.

LOVED this book. Also LOVED the Gone Away Lake series. I truly believe they sparked my love on antiques. But the books i loved the most were the Borrowers series by Mary Norton.

[quote] Where she served High Point coffee to the children after dinner.

The Michelangelo statue is BRIMMING WITH FLAY-VA!

Wes Anderson obviously loved it too; there's a nod to it Royal Tenenbaums.

I planned my secret lair, it was at the Frick.

The story took place too far away to inspire me . My runaway inspiration was “The Boxcar Children” wherein a moron checks in on the kids who live in an abandoned railcar even though he knows they’re his grandchildren.

Then, I had my main addictive book series.....

The Bacall TV remake moved the story to a museum in Pasadena and made other significant changes to the story. I much prefer the Ingrid Bergman version, which also features the late, great George Rose and Madeline Kahn. Interesting that Bogart's two most-closely-associated co-stars ended up assaying the same role.

For fans of the original book I highly recommend Konigsburg's Father's Arcane Daughter (now back in print under the title My Father's Daughter), which was made into the TV film Caroline? with Stephanie Zimbalist, A very powerful book!

Elizabeth Enright also wrote the Melendy family books. They're certainly terribly dated now, but the sibling relationships are eternal. And I loved the central conceit of "The Saturdays" — four sibs pool their allowances and give it to one person a week, and that child uses it to fulfill a fantasy. One of the pleasures is seeing children roaming New York City alone in a way they never would today.

r5 you would love Sandra Scoppettone's and Louise Fitzhugh's baby beatnik book [italic]Suzuki Beane[/italic].

E.L. Konigsburg had several gay characters in her final book, The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World. A very unusual story about friendship, art, and the sacrifices that people make for love.

Gone-Away Lake was magical and the original illustrations were gorgeous. It would still make a wonderful movie (if they set it in the 50s).

One of my favorite childhood memories is being a child extra on the set of "The Pick Up Artist". We shot scenes in the Museum of Natural History at night over a two day period and between takes the guards let us see the dinosaurs and other exhibits, some of them with the lights off and lit by flashlights. Robert Downey Jr. Played hide-and-seek with us as well and was really a very sweet-seeming person from what I recall. We didn't stay the night but it was still thrilling. It felt so otherworldly and illicit.

I was more of a "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret " kind of kid who discovered the pleasures of masturbation...

R24 I bought an old library copy of The Saturdays last year and I treasure it.

I want to get my hands on old hardback copies of all the Melendy books.

r29. I thought "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" would have introduced you to the pleasures of [italic]menstruation.[/italic]

I think you learned the pleasures of [italic]masturbation[/italic] from "Then Again, Maybe I Won't."

If this is the book where they scooped coins out of the fountain/wishing pool every night to use at the automat then YES I loved this book. I also think about scooping up the coins every time I see a wishing well/fountain full of coins.

Maybe r29 masturbated to "Are you there...."?

OMG, this might be my new favorite thread! There are so many books on here I want to read or revisit. There isn’t really another place online like Datalounge when it comes to conversations about subjects like this one!

I think someone hinted this earlier, but the weird prophetic aspect of this story is that an actual Michelangelo statue, of a Cupid not an Angel, was identified a decade or so ago at a former Whitney mansion. The house is a few blocks away from the Met and was designed by Stanford White and is now part of the French Embassy. The statue is on loan and on display at the Met.

I loved "Mixed-Up Files" as many of you did and also read "Harriet the Spy". The paperback novel I still own is "The Cricket in Times Square." Now that book, for some reason was really special. Last year I re-read the end of "Cricket" and it was still marvelous.

R32, yes. I loved this book! I wanted to hide out in a museum just like Claudia and Jamie.

I never read this book. Loved Harriet the Spy and Long Secret (perhaps more as it reminded me of summer on Nantucket in that era). Also a fan of Melendy Family, although the child abuse issue presented was disturbing.

ARE YOU THERE GOD? was on our summer reading lists in junior high. I had A LOT of questions for my mom about it at the time!

What a great story r28.

Thank you.

Some of you here may find these collected archived articles about Children’s Literature from the New Yorker of interest.

Just going to toss this one out there as well.

The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill.

I LOVE The Pushcart War. I read it to my students a couple of months ago and they loved it. There are so many classic children's books that are becoming forgotten, as school libraries simply throw out anything that hasn't been checked out in the last couple of years. But when teachers read them in class the students love them as much as always.

I wanted to present young preteen hole to George The Babysitter.

I adored the Melendey family books and have them in hardback from the forties. The kids and the adults in their lives are all wonderful characters. Mrs. Oliphant is my favorite.

Another couple from the same period that were brilliant were Kate Seredy's books about rural Hungary - The Good Master and The Singing Tree.

One of the early Newberry winners that I remember really enjoying was The Trumpeter of Krakow from the 20s but I don't recall much about it at this point. Sixty year old memory...

We read this book in fifth grade, then later that year, we took a field trip to the Met. It was absolutely awesome. Before going to the Met, we had lunch at South Street Seaport. Great memories.

Yes, I loved it and when I was in NYC several years ago, I brought it up to the woman who served us at the MOMA cafe. Yes, different magazine but we had a great time talking about the book and wanting to get locked up in a museum.

Last night I watched the 1973 movie version linked above on YouTube. It was just OK. No surprise that the young actors who played Claudia and Jamie didn't go on to Jodie Foster-style careers.

The Teddy Beat Habit is another great NYC kid’s book.

^^ Bear. Though it takes place in the Beat era.

I was a nerdy kid who loved to read but I thought this book was boring.

i was a total bookworm and i can't believe i never read this book. grew up in late 70s/early 80s.

Thanks, R39! I remember that our "camp out space" was the hall of aquatic birds, and talking to all these much older character actors who were playing the adult extras. I remember the huge lights they had set up to imitate daylight flooding the main entrance and how unbelievable the effect looked at night. And I remember seeing Molly Ringwald, who I was kind of obsessed with and being too shy to go talk to her. I've never actually read the Mixed Up Files, but every time people talk about it I think of those two nights.

My mom was obsessed with museums and theater so we kids had a lot of "backstage" experiences with both. I asked her what she remembered of this episode and she said that she remembered feeling sorry for RDJ because she thought he was a kid who never got attention from his parents (I guess he was about 20-21 when he made the film) and was therefore the class clown forever.

Punchline - as there is evidently an explicit sexual dialogue that goes on in one scene she never let us watch the film - and I still haven't seen it to this day.

I think I'd rather remember it from where I was.

Konigsburg wrote so many quirky, perceptive children's booksin addition to "Mixed-Up Files." A non-cutesy sense of children's sometimes very adult feelings, and usually a wistful backbeat or undertone, even when things were humorous . . . These were a few of my faves from her long list . . ,

"Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth"--Inter-class, inter-racial friendship is the least important motif in the story . . .

"About the B'nai Bagels"--Jewish mother becomes the temple boys' softball team coach, to the mortification (but ultimate pride) of her due-to-be-Bar-Mitvah son

"The Dragon in the Ghetto Caper"

"(george)"--Heartrending story about a mentally ill boy with split personality

"The View From Saturday"--1997 Newbery Award--A teacher returns to school after an accident that kills her husband and leaves her a paraplegic; she and several misfit students win the Academic Bowl competition . . . and hearts . . .

I never read a Konigsburg book I didn't love. She had a knack for getting inside young people's heads and never talked down to them.

I loved From the Mixed Up Files. In 1967, one of the librarians at our local public library on Long Island asked my parents if I could appear on a radio show to discuss the book. My mother, who was an avid reader and who had passed on to all of her three kids this love of reading, was thrilled. I thought it was great. A few years ago I discovered that all of the shows from this interviewer had been transcribed and were available online. I was 12 when this took place, so I don’t believe that I had anything particularly insightful to say. Appearing on the show was a blast.

I never read the books, but one of my college friends was racking her brains trying to remember the title of this series. I didn’t know what she was talking about or what this was called, but the name just popped in my head out of nowhere & I blurted it out. It shocked both of us!

I was more of a “Don’t Eat the Pictures” kind of kid:

The Mysterious Shrinking House by Jane Louise Curry

OMG R58 ! I loved that one too and had totally forgotten it ! Thank you !

Freddy the Pig!

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle!

Miss Pickerell

Swallows and Amazons!

This is THE book that made me want to live in NYC. Read it when I was, I think, 9?

Moved to NYC after college. Still here after 20 years.

I remember liking the first part of the book where the kids run away and live in the Met. But the second half of the story lost my attention.

R61, me too. I was enchanted by the New York books I dearly loved: “Harriet The Spy”, “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing”, “From the Mixed-Up Files...” “The Catcher In The Rye”

Now I live on the Upper East Side, a few blocks from the Met and a few blocks from Harriet’s townhouse. Still madly in love with this city; been here 33 years.

[quote] Still madly in love with this city;

Mary!

Did you also read Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack, R63?

I read that in 6th grade and it cemented my focus on NYC. I liked the idea of a city where kids could go anywhere they wanted on a subway and have intellectual conversations in diners after school.

"Dinky Hooker Shoots Smack"?

This was an actual kids' book?

Was the next in the series "Teeny Pimp Presents Hole"?

Eloise by the maniacal Kay Thompson. I so wanted to live at the Plaza.

r66, the title was actually "Dinky [italic]Hocker[/italic] Shoots Smack!"

And the heroine did not actually shoot smack. She was an overweight pre-teen whose mother was a "feeder," and who ignored Dinky's weight problems in favor of her pet cause, leading the PTA's fight against teenage drug use. Dink had to embarrass her mom by writing the title as a graffito at some sort of school event to get her to pay attention to her weight problem.

And it put Brooklyn Heights on the YA map.

R68, ahh, I misread the post.

You must admit that's kind of a fucked-up title for a kids' book anyway.

R70 The best crazy YA titles were from Paul Zindel, such as Pardon Me, Your Stepping on My Eyeball!

[quote]And it put Brooklyn Heights on the YA map.

Bells Are Ringing did it for the GAY map.

YA was a WHOLE different ballgame than "kids books," R70.

In the late '60s and early '70s, publishing and network TV became obsessed with "relevancy," which brought about a whole bunch of crap content kids falling prey to drugs, cults, sex, dropping out, running way, etc., — ESPECIALLY in book publishing.

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack was a really smart critique of that — the author wrote a book about typical teens with typical teen problems of loneliness, belonging and romantic yearning, but to pump up the sales figures she put "shoots smack" in the title, which was the same phrase the book's heroine posted around town to get her anti-drug-activist mother to notice her.

OP: are you Rami Malek?

The Frankweiler book played a key part in an episode of Mr Robot.