Stewart, Trenton Lee.
THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY
Boston : Little, Brown, 2007
IL 3-6, RL 5.6
ISBN 0316057770

(2 booktalks)

Four very bright students took a number of puzzling tests and were admitted to the Mysterious Benedict Society.  Soon, they were sent on a secret and dangerous mission. Follow the clues with them as they go undercover and infiltrate the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened (L.I.V.E.)  (Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Awards nominee, 2008-2009)

Booktalk #2

Four children, Reynie, Kate, Sticky and Constance, are on a mission to save the world from the Emergency, but they don’t know it yet. Each of them responded to an odd advertisement in a newspaper which read, “ARE YOU A GIFTED CHILD LOOKING FOR OPPORTUNITIES?”

Each of these gifted children has a special talent: Reynie solves puzzles, Sticky has a photographic memory, Kate is a circus performer and Constance…well, no one is sure what Constance’s talent is yet. Constance is a bit of a whiner.

All four have all completed a test where they were the only ones in their rooms to have passed. Very oddly, each of the children were approached by a green-haired girl named Rhonda Kazembe who lost her only pencil for the test down a drain pipe.

A sad but tall man in a “weatherbeaten hat, weatherbeaten jacket, weatherbeaten trousers and weatherbeaten boots” is about to take the children to meet Mr. Benedict.

(Read pages 83-85).

The Mysterious Benedict Society will be enjoyed by the same kind of reader who likes stories with a bit of adventure and intertwined stories such as The View from Saturday.  (Melissa Bowman, Melissa.Bowman@pisd.edu, Armstrong Middle School,  Lone Star Book Award nominee, 2008-2009)