When suburban Claudia Kincaid decides to run away, she knows she doesn't just want to run "from" somewhere she wants to run "to" somewhere--to a place that is comfortable, beautiful, and preferably elegant. She chooses the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Knowing that her younger brother, Jamie, has money and thus can help her with the serious cash flow problem she invites him along. Once settled into the museum, Claudia and Jamie, find themselves caught up in the mystery of an angel statue that the museum purchased at an auction for a bargain price of $250. The statue is possibly an early work of the Renaissance master Michelangelo, and therefore worth millions. Is it? Or isn't it? Claudia is determined to find out. This quest leads Claudia to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the remarkable old woman who sold the statue and to some equally remarkable discoveries about herself.When Claudia decided to run away, she planned very carefully. She would be gone just long enough to teach her parents a lesson in Claudia appreciation. And she would go in comfort-she would live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She saved her money, and she invited her brother Jamie to go, mostly because be was a miser and would have money.Claudia was a good organizer and Jamie bad some ideas, too; so the two took up residence at the museum right on schedule. But once the fun of settling in was over, Claudia had two unexpected problems: She felt just the same, and she wanted to feel different; and she found a statue at the Museum so beautiful she could not go home until she bad discovered its maker, a question that baffled the experts, too.The former owner of the statue was Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Without her-well, without her, Claudia might never have found a way to go home.To celebrate the 40th anniversary of E.L. Konigsburgs 1967 win of the Newbery Medal and Newbery Honor--a feat never before repeated by any author--Aladdin Paperbacks is reissuing the entire Konigsburg oeuvre throughout 2007, including some long out-of-print titles, in luxurious, deluxe trade paperback editions.
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Elaine Lobl Konigsburg, noted children's writer and illustrator, was born February 10, 1930 in New York City. The second of three daughters, she was reared in small Pennsylvania towns . She attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) and received a BS in 1952. She was the first member of her family to go to college and, unaware of her talent for writing, she majored in chemistry, doing graduate study at the University of Pittsburgh. Her best-known titles include A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, which was an American Library Association Notable Children's Book and National Book Award nominee, 1974; The Second Mrs. Giaconda and Father's Arcane Daughter (both ALA Best Book for young adults); and Throwing Shadows (ALA Notable Children's Book and American Book Award nomination, 1980). She won the Newbery Honor in 1968 for Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth and the Newbery Medal in 1968 and the William Allen White Award in 1970 for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. 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 as 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. Konigsburg married David Konigsburg in 1952 and they had three children, Paul, Laurie, and Ross. She began writing when her youngest child started school.
