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Summary
Summary
"ninety percent of who you are is invisible."
Amedeo Kaplan seems just like any other new kid who has moved into the town of St. Malo, Florida, a navy town where new faces are the norm. But Amedeo has a secret, a dream: More than anything in the world, he wants to discover something -- a place, a process, even a fossil -- some treasure that no one realizes is there until he finds it. And he would also like to discover a true friend to share these things with.
William Wilcox seems like an unlikely candidate for friendship: an aloof boy who is all edges and who owns silence the way other people own words. When Amedeo and William find themselves working together on a house sale for Amedeo's eccentric neighbor, Mrs. Zender, Amedeo has an inkling that both his wishes may come true. For Mrs. Zender's mansion is crammed with memorabilia of her long life, and there is a story to go with every piece. Soon the boys find themselves caught up in one particular story -- a story that links a sketch, a young boy's life, an old man's reminiscence, and a painful secret dating back to the outrages of Nazi Germany. It's a story that will take them to the edge of what they know about heroism and the mystery of the human heart.
Two-time Newbery winner E. L. Konigsburg spins a magnificent tale of art, discovery, friendship, history, and truth.
Author Notes
Elaine Lobl Konigsburg, noted children's writer and illustrator, was born February 10, 1930 in New York City. She received a BS in chemistry from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) in 1952. She did graduate study at the University of Pittsburgh.
Her best-known titles included A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, The Second Mrs. Giaconda, Father's Arcane Daughter, and Throwing Shadows. She won the Newbery Honor in 1968 for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and the William Allen White Award in 1970. She won the Newbery Medal again in 1997 for The View from Saturday.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was adapted into a motion picture starring Ingrid Bergman in 1973 and later released as The Hideaways in 1974. It became a television film starring Lauren Bacall in 1995. Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was adapted for television as Jennifer and Me for NBC-TV in 1973.
She died on April 19, 2013 from complications of a stroke that she had suffered a week prior at the age of 83.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This complex work has all the trappings of vintage Konigsburg: unusually articulate children considering the adult world and trying to stake their claim on it; an art history-related mystery; a headlines-inspired story line; eccentric grown-ups; and, of course, incisive, often brilliant prose. Sad to say, the magic is missing. The action starts off promisingly. Amedeo Kaplan (son of characters met in The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place) has just moved to coastal Florida and made friends with William Wilcox, son of an estate sale manager (introduced in the story collection Throwing Shadows). As the boys help William's mother pack up the palatial home of Amedeo's next-door neighbor, a larger-than-life retired opera singer, Amedeo finds a signed Modigliani drawing. Because Amedeo has just returned from attending an art exhibit curated by another Outcasts alum, Peter Vanderwaal, on the subject of "degenerate" art (modern art criminalized by the Nazis), Amedeo is primed to uncover the history behind the drawing-a dark provenance that links the retired opera singer, the Vanderwaals and the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. While the author's material and style prove as stimulating as ever, her repeated reliance on coincidence weakens the book's impact. Her tried-and-true fans will forgive these contrivances, but newcomers should not start here. Ages 9-12. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Readers will recognize some of the characters here -- Loretta Bevilaqua, Peter Vanderwaal -- from Konigsburg's last novel, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (rev. 3/04), but its central mystery, concerning the provenance of a drawing, recalls an earlier book, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Loretta and her son Amedeo (who is also Peter Vanderwaal's godson) have moved to Florida, where they are neighbors to the aged opera singer Mrs. Zender, nee Aida Lily Tull. Mrs. Zender, inimitably a Konigsburg creation, is moving into a retirement home because ""the world as it ought to be has come to an end,"" and she has employed estate-sale manager Dora Ellen Wilcox, mother to William, to liquidate the contents of her mansion. William and Amedeo apply themselves to cleaning and cataloging Mrs. Zender's many possessions, and happen upon -- or did Mrs. Zender place it in their way? -- a drawing that links not only to the fate of homosexuals under the Third Reich but also to Amedeo's roots in Epiphany, New York. Although Konigsburg is incapable of writing an uninteresting paragraph, this novel attempts to sustain altogether too many subplots and relies on too much contrivance to bring them together. That the final showdown is between two old ladies is some indication that children will feel sidelined by the story, and the slow coming-together of its pieces will make readers impatient. But Mrs. Vanderwaal and Mrs. Zender in full cry, and the mysterious, miraculous way Konigsburg makes the Entartete ""Kunst"" (""degenerate 'art'"") of the Nazis matter in the sunbaked Florida of today, show this author at her best. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Amedeo Kaplan, new to St. Malo, Florida, is envious of those who have made important discoveries and hopes that he, too, will find something that would have remained hidden had he not found it. A likely place for such a disovery turns out to be next door, in the home of Mrs. Aida Zender, an outsize, over-the-top, former opera singer, whose rooms are festooned with mementos from her career. Mrs. Zender is on her way to a retirement facility, and her home's contents are being cataloged for sale by Mrs. Wilcox and her son, William. The boys bond over pressure cookers and princess phones when Amedeo joins the Wilcox liquidation team. Meanwhile, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Amedeo's godfather, a museum curator, is mounting an exhibit on degenerate art during the Nazi era. Employing her signature stringing of plotlines set in various locales, Konigsburg uses a Modigliani drawing to introduce stories of Nazi cruelty, a disappointing marriage, and a burgeoning friendship. She also relies on another staple, the musings of a precocious urban preteen, to advance the story. Some readers will be turned off by Amedeo, who can only be described as prissy, and when discussions turn to mise-en-scène and heavy curtains with valances (The word portiére from Gone with the Wind came to mind), a few more readers may be lost. Those who shrug off such affectations, however, will be caught up by the interlocked stories; especially moving is the diary reminiscence of a Dutch teen whose gay brother was lost to the Nazis. As always, Konigsburg writes with a singular intelligence that permeates every page.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2007 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-This humorous, poignant, tragic, and mysterious story has intertwining plots that peel away like the layers of an onion. An unlikely friendship develops between two precocious sixth graders as they unite to sort through the belongings of an eccentric, pretentious, and intriguing neighbor. William's mother is a liquidator hired to evaluate Mrs. Zender's possessions as the old woman gets ready to move into a residence for senior citizens, and William is helping her. Amadeo asks to join him in the project. William is a bright, sophisticated youngster; Amadeo, the new kid in St. Malo, FL, dreams of someday making an important discovery. He suspects there are possibilities among Mrs. Zender's belongings, particularly a piece of art by Modigliani. Amadeo's godfather, Peter Vanderwaal, is preparing an exhibit of Degenerate Art for the Sheboygan Art Center. This plotline leads to a discovery about Mr. Zender's past. Through old letters, parts of a memoir written by Peter's father, Peter's introduction to his exhibit, and thumbnail biographies of the artists deemed unfit by the Nazis, readers are educated about this aspect of Nazi repression. Dramatic revelations about the victimization of homosexuals and other figures during the Holocaust also become part of the story. In spite of these necessary intrusions, readers will be eager to discover the truth about the Zenders and the suspicious art treasure. Konigsburg, a master of characterization, has created a cast of idiosyncratic people and skillfully embedded them in an appealing tale of friendship, loyalty, and mystery.-Renee Steinberg, formerly at Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Sixth-grader Amedeo Kaplan (son of now-divorced Jake Kaplan and Loretta Bevilaqua, and godson of Peter Vanderwaal, from Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, 2004) becomes intrigued with his neighbor Mrs. Zender, a flamboyant recluse. Once a second-tier opera diva, she can no longer afford "people" and, incapable of refilling her own champagne glass, must move to a senior residence. Enter Mrs. Wilcox, "liquidator" of estates, and her son William. The two boys help every afternoon, sorting and tagging items, until Amedeo finds a drawing signed "Modigliani," and they unravel a mystery that amazingly involves both the Vanderwaals and the Wexlers--the story of the Nazi confiscation of "Degenerate art," of postwar blackmail and of a heroic gesture. Amedeo's own revelations (about what people are made of and how to see it) are so intricately delivered that the very patient young readers who have made it to the end of the story may find they have to grow into it. But there's plenty to grow into. Quirky, wandering, sometimes unbelievable, it nevertheless takes firm root in the reader's mind, training their eye to watch for stories that need discovering. (Fiction. 11-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
