The Mysterious Benedict Society

by Trenton Lee Stewart

The Mysterious Benedict Society

published	March 7th 2007 by Little, Brown Young Readers
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0316057770 (isbn13: 9780316057776)
pages	485
literary awards	E.B. White Read Aloud Award, 2008
description	"Are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?" Dozens of children respond to this peculiar ad in the newspaper and are...more [close] "Are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?" Dozens of children respond to this peculiar ad in the newspaper and are then put through a series of mind-bending tests, which readers take along with them. Only four children-Reynie, Kate, Sticky, and Constance-succeed. Their challenge: to go on a secret mission that only the most intelligent and inventive children could complete. To accomplish it they will have to go undercover at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that there are no rules. But what they'll find in the hidden labyrinth of the school's underground tunnels is more than your average school supplies. First-time children's novelist Trenton Lee Stewart takes readers on an adventure that puts friends, family, and foe to the test. Are you up to the challenge? [close]
date added	02-09-07 edit book

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1157)

Laura

Laura rated it:

04/18/08

bookshelves: books-in-a-series, childrensliterature, crime, fantasy, friendship, mystery, survival, teamwork

recommends it for: mystery lovers, secret society buffs

“Are You a Gifted Child looking for Special Opportunities?” reads the newspaper advertisement.

Reynard “Reynie” Muldoon, George “Sticky” Washington, Kate Wetherall (The Great Kate Weather Machine), Constance Contraire, and many other children answer “yes” to this ad and go to the specified location.

Once there they all embark on a series of bizarre tests from which only the four clever orphans–Reynie, Sticky, Kate, and Constance–emerge successful. These four solve the e...more

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Elizabeth

Elizabeth rated it:

12/09/07

Read in November, 2007

How do librarians decide what children's book they want to read next? Well, there are professional reviews, online reviews, and good old-fashioned word of mouth. And when it came to "The Mysterious Benedict Society", I picked up this 486-page tome, turned it about, and then needed a quickie confirmation from somebody as to whether or not I should shell out a significant portion of time to read this puppy. As it happened, a librarian I knew and trusted assured me that it wasn't all that...more How do librarians decide what children's book they want to read next? Well, there are professional reviews, online reviews, and good old-fashioned word of mouth. And when it came to "The Mysterious Benedict Society", I picked up this 486-page tome, turned it about, and then needed a quickie confirmation from somebody as to whether or not I should shell out a significant portion of time to read this puppy. As it happened, a librarian I knew and trusted assured me that it wasn't all that good and that I shouldn't waste my days. Fair enough. I gave away my copy and decided to forget all about it. But then the book's name kept cropping up left and right. Oh, I should really read it! Oh, it's really good! Oh, you haven't read it? What's wrong with you? Eventually, the pressure got to be too much. I couldn't take it any more. As far as I could ascertain I was the only children's librarian in the WORLD who hadn't read "The Mysterious Benedict Society", and that was going to have to change. So I borrowed a library copy, took it home, and fell in love. Once in a while you just want to read a book that's fun. This book is precisely that. Smart and thoroughly a good good read.

Reynie Muldoon doesn't think of himself as extraordinary. He thinks of himself as weird and out of place. An orphan, Reynie and his tutor one day spot an advertisement that reads, "ARE YOU A GIFTED CHILD LOOKING FOR SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES?" He is, as it happens, and that means taking a series of tests. Odd tests. Odd, increasingly peculiar tests that go beyond the classroom, or even the realm of the normal. By the end of the puzzles Reynie has passed, as have three other rather remarkable children. Sticky Washington is a bit of a bookworm, but the kind of kid who never forgets a single fact that he reads. Kate Wetherall is an athletic type who carries a handy bucket with her wherever it is that she goes. And Constance Contraire is very small, very rude, and very stubborn. Together, these kids have been recruited by a Mr. Benedict to infiltrate the very prestigious Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened and discover what it is that the school's devious head is planning. They know that it's evil and dangerous, but beyond that they are out of information. So it is that our four heroes become spies and set out to save the world using their very individual abilities.

I've heard this book referred to as two different stories smooshed together into a single tale. That's not exactly how I'd chose to describe it, but it's a fair assessment. This actually isn't a problem either. If you like the first portion then you are bound to like the second. I was fond of the writing too. Never twee or coy, it comes right to the point of things without sacrificing emotion or character. It can get away with sentences like, "She announced her age right away, for children consider their ages every bit as important as their names." because they are straightforward and true. Stewart can get stuff across without a bunch of overwrought flowery language. "Their mouths went dry as bones," needs no further explanation.

In terms of the sequel, one person I discussed the book with said of it, "I don't feel I need to go back to that world." I agree, in a way. Stewart wraps up his loose ends nicely. Unlike some series for kids, you aren't left with many holes or gaps in the plot. There is certainly room for a follow-up, but if you don't read it you won't feel you've missed something. The important thing to remember is that clever kids like clever tales. For children who like everything from The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin to The Puzzling World of Winston Breen, by Eric Berlin, this is the book for them. Consistently fun and fine, the book whizzes through its 400+ pages so fast that you'll be shocked at how quickly you find yourself at the end....less

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4 comments

Kathryn

Kathryn rated it:

12/23/07

bookshelves: mystery

Read in December, 2007

I'VE FINISHED THE BOOK: My initial impressions (and review comments) were overwhelmingly enthusiastic. I admit that the second half of the book did not quite live up to my hopes/expectations but I'd still give the book four stars overall (five stars for the beginning--see comments below). I felt that the second half of the story (once the children officially embark on their mission and become The Mysterious Benedict Society) was not as captivating, mainly because I found a great deal of the c...more I'VE FINISHED THE BOOK: My initial impressions (and review comments) were overwhelmingly enthusiastic. I admit that the second half of the book did not quite live up to my hopes/expectations but I'd still give the book four stars overall (five stars for the beginning--see comments below). I felt that the second half of the story (once the children officially embark on their mission and become The Mysterious Benedict Society) was not as captivating, mainly because I found a great deal of the charm in the first half was found in the character descriptions/development and the little mysteries and puzzles the children had to solve. Once they embark on their mission, the characters they encounter become more one-dimensional and also the character development of the children is rather forgotten for awhile in the attempt to describe the great mystery/challenge they must face and thwart (and, also, I was not ultra-engrossed in that particular element of the story). Ultimately, the climax was still interesting and exciting and it had a very tidy and happy ending (much more a typical "children's book" in that respect than, say, Harry Potter) and I would recommend this to those wishing a pleasant and easy read (though a few of the puzzles in the beginning weren't that easy for me!) about a diverse and entertaining group of orphans who must save the world and find a way to feel loved and to belong in it if they do.

UPDATE: ABOUT 2/3 DONE--CONTINUES CHARMING!!!! SO FAR, RECOMMENDED TO ANYONE MISSING STORIES ABOUT CHILDREN AT INTERESTING SCHOOLS NEEDING TO FIGURE OUT A MYSTERY AND "SAVE THE WORLD" (NOT THAT IT'S "HAPPY POTTER" BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION, BUT IF YOU MISS HARRY THIS CHRISTMAS, TRY THIS BOOK!) It is sooo captivating, I adore the characters (even if one is highly annoying!) and the mystery/suspense is excellent--tantalizing instead of irritating in its unfolding and (as of yet) relative vagueness. I can't believe that this book simply appeared randomly on Amazon as I was searching for something else--truth is, THIS is the type of book I've been looking for! So far, it is a good consolation for missing Harry Potter--it's not really similar, yet has its own style about students and orphans and children who must do amazing things.
**Intelligent in content yet sweetly simple in style; the characters already seem quite real--this is an author who seems to remember/understand childhood. I'm excited to continue the imaginative journey...**...less

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6 comments

Bonnie Gayle

Bonnie Gayle rated it:

12/31/07

bookshelves: library-books, mysteries-thrillers, reviewed

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: fans of adventurous books for younger readers

This one had an interesting and exciting plot, but at times felt a little much.

This is another hard one to give a synopsis of without ruining! Take caution if you don't want to be spoiled, but I will try to keep it innocent enough.

Reynard, although he goes by Reynie, has grown up in an orphanage (again with the parentless theme for me. I don't get it!) without friends, since he is very, very smart, and the other orphans are mean to him because of it.
One day, he finds an ad in the news...more This one had an interesting and exciting plot, but at times felt a little much.

This is another hard one to give a synopsis of without ruining! Take caution if you don't want to be spoiled, but I will try to keep it innocent enough.

Reynard, although he goes by Reynie, has grown up in an orphanage (again with the parentless theme for me. I don't get it!) without friends, since he is very, very smart, and the other orphans are mean to him because of it.
One day, he finds an ad in the newspaper asking for smart children to take a test, which will lead to exciting opportunities. Reynie jumps on the opportunity, sails through the tests, and ends up in a mysterious group with 3 other kids, equally as smart as he is. Ends up, there is a very important and dangerous mission planned for them. They will be lucky to not only have the mission be a success, but even to survive it...but if the mission is not a success, the whole world will suffer!

For the cons: if the synopsis felt a little overwrought, and dramatic to you, the book felt a bit like that to me too. There is a line between an adventurous story, and a soap opera, and that line got crossed too much for my tastes. It even falls for several of the soap opera cliches, but to discuss them would give away too much of the story.
The other con is that I felt too old for the book at times. The kids would make discoveries, and say 'why didn't we think of that earlier? It's so obvious!' And I was thinking, well, yeah. I found it so obvious that I assumed you already realized it. A lot of their discoveries were anti-climactic for me. Perhaps for a younger reader, the surprises would be just that: surprising.
Also, they send messages throughout the book, and most of the time, it just says, 'they sent the message' but, those would have been the perfect times to kind of sum up the important things that had happened, and also show to the reader what the CHARACTERS had thought was the important information. It felt like a good opportunity lost to me.

Overall, it's an adventurous, fast paced, yet intelligently puzzle-driven book (which can be hard to do), with interesting characters that you feel for, which, sadly, at times crosses the line into soap opera....less

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Navah

Navah rated it:

06/08/08

bookshelves: kidlit, middlegrade

Read in March, 2007

recommends it for: rena p ginsbery ray, this one's for you

"Are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?"

When Reynie Muldoon, orphan and gifted child, responds to an ad in the paper, his world is instantly turned upside down. After a series of tests that challenge not just his intelligence, but also his ingenuity, cleverness and character, Reynie is selected with three other children - brilliant Sticky Washington, ingenious Kate Wetherell, and irritable Constance Contraire - for an important mission. Brought together by the my...more

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Eyebright

Eyebright rated it:

02/11/08

bookshelves: 2008-books, my-favorites

recommended to Eyebright by: Sweetpotato
recommends it for: Anyone who loves stories about children saving the world

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I loved it! My family and I listened to this in the car, so I can't promise to spell things right(cd's don't tell you how to spell things).

This book started out kind of iffy. I kept thinking, there is no way I am going to answer an ad that really tells you nothing! But then, I am not an orphan. As the story went on, there began to be more and more things that I liked.

I think that my favorite out of the children was Reni (?). I loved the way his mind worked, the way he puzzled things...more

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1 comments

Jenn

Jenn rated it:

04/14/08

bookshelves: read-in-2008, young-readers

Read in April, 2008

Reynie, Kate, Sticky, and Constance are four very gifted children with a mission. They call themselves The Mysterious Benedict Society and together they have to infiltrate the nefarious Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened - a psuedo-school run by the evil Mr. Curtain. It's up to these four disimilar and intrepid kids to save the world and of course they are completely ip to the task.

I thnk this book will have broad appeal to under-12s. The length of the book threw me off - it was so ...more

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Marya

Marya rated it:

04/04/08

bookshelves: teen-mystery

Read in November, 2007

In the Mysterious Benedict Society, four children with four different problem solving skill sets come together to solve a mystery. Those four children consist of the reader, who has the amazing ability to memorize things; the engineer, who has the amazing ability to create anything to solve the task at hand from materials she carries with her; the baby, whose chief attribute is to be unpredictable and not listen to the rules much less follow them; and the professional puzzle solver, who looks at...more

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Teresa

Teresa rated it:

07/28/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: fifth grade and up

The story tied together well, and I could picture what was going on quite well. Although some of the plot line is freakish (with a Clockwork Orange slant), I think the action/adventure and ending make it less freakish. If that makes sense.

Here's an excerpt from pages 171=172:

"... Pretty soon you don't even notice them. I remember when i was a student, I liked to play tricks on them -- nothing they could do about it, you see, because no rule said I couldn't. But now I hardly pay att...more

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Ann

Ann rated it:

12/22/07

bookshelves: actionadventure, childrens-stories, fantasy, mysteries, sci-fi

Read in December, 2007

What a delightful story! It was very difficult to choose a shelf for this book - it's not truly fantasy, but its not just adventure or mystery either. Perhaps a little Sci-Fi more than fantasy? Well, anyway, it was a wonderful book about four children who agree to help save the world. It sounds a little over-done, I know, but it’s really quite sweet and charming. Well-written and with loveable characters and a kindness throughout the book I was enthralled from the first page.
The book ...more

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

6 comments

Faith

Faith rated it:

09/05/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: anyone

I can’t say enough good things about it. The characters are charming, except, of course, for the evil rotten nasty gits who are trying to take over the world. Four children, backed by their team of assistants, are all that stands between the evil Mr. Curtain and the world. Two of the children are orphans, one has run away from home, and the other was abandoned by her father years ago. Why children? Why, to be more precise, unattached children? The benevolent Mr. Benedict explains: “Oh, ye...more

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nicole

nicole rated it:

05/08/07

bookshelves: 7up, unfinished

Read in April, 2007

Having quit this book half-way through, you might think I dislike it. I don't. It's a great book, especially if you're, you know, between the ages of eight and twelve. But I'm not. So it felt pretty tedious (example: you know, how at the end of the first three Harry Potter books Dumbledore's all "here, let's take a two chapters to explain everything that just happened" and it feels kinda cheap because you're not braindead and all that? Well, like HP, this is a great story, but t...more

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Recynd

Recynd rated it:

(review of isbn 0316003956)

07/07/08

bookshelves: currently-reading, fiction, loved-it, young-adult-kids

I'm nearing the end of this marvelous book and the only upside to finishing it is that I know there's a sequel!

This book's story line is quirky and clever, with unexpected twists that are presented in a way that is totally coherent...not always easy to do, I imagine. The characters are well-developed and imperfectly perfect, if that makes sense, though with a few of them, I'm left wanting more (I'm sure that will be addressed in future books). My favorite thing about this book is that the ...more

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Sarah

Sarah rated it:

06/11/07

Read in May, 2007

I'm super excited to start this book. It's an enormous children's book (500 pages!) and I have already renewed it from the library, but I just can't wait. The book is about gifted children trying to get into the very secretive Learning Institute for the Very Enlightned. As a child that was pulled out and placed in all sorts of classes (including gifted) I am eager to learn about the characters and their personalitites in relation to my own at that age. I hope to begin this book by the weeken...more

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Amanda

Amanda rated it:

06/29/08

Read in October, 2007

Oh, how I loved this one. It reminded me of The Penderwicks- a perfect mixture of old-fashioned and contemporary. I think if E. Nesbit were still around, this is what she would be writing.

I loved the characters and their "superpowers" (especially Constance!). I loved that I wasn't entirely sure how it was going to turn out, and the twists and turns were perfectly plausible. The Edward Gorey-esque line drawings complemented the story perfectly.

The only thing that bothered me was...more

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West Region,

West Region, added it

04/15/08

bookshelves: middle_school_08, sciencefiction, yt

Read in September, 2007

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.

The Mysterious Benedict Society isn’t mysterious in and of itself. Nor does anyone in it like Eggs Benedict. Rather, it is an “elite” team of four highly-gifted orphans, all of whom are a little odd, to say the least. They are recruited to stop the evil Mr. Curtain from taking over the world by a mysterious man named Benedict, hence the group’s name.

The gang is sent to a heavily guarded island to “infiltrate” a special ...more

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Molly

Molly rated it:

01/09/08

bookshelves: best-of-2007-presentation-, children-s-lit, good-audio-books

Read in January, 2008

This was a fantastic novel, well plotted and logical--just like its main characters. I'll admit, while I was reading I came across a few things that made me scratch my head...but in the end they were so insignificant that I forgot them!

The story follows a group of young savants who are recruited into the fold of a mysterious society. The curious mixture of adult sized brainpower and childlike simplicity is what makes these characters so forceful and yet so endearing.

The artwork on the ...more

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sweet pea

sweet pea rated it:

06/05/08

bookshelves: young-adult

Read in June, 2008

my seven year old friend Abegale passionately loves this book. one day i said (in jest), "i've heard this book sucks" and held up this tome. her and her friend almost killed me. if they had their straight razors, i would be dead now. so, i figured i should probably read the book that almost caused my demise.

i, of course, loved it. all of the characters in this book are excellently envisioned. i love how each of the members of the Mysterious Benedict Society solve the same probl...more

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Heather

Heather rated it:

11/03/07

Read in November, 2007

At first this reminded me a bit of The Westing Game -- a puzzley sort of book that the reader is encouraged to sort out along with the characters -- but that went away eventually and it's really just a mystery written for children that's better than many written for adults. Some of it is far-fetched, sure, and there are puns with names (Nomansan Island, f'rinstance), but I liked that the children were strong, smart, occasionally beaten down but ever resilient. I liked, too, that all of the adult...more

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Lauren

Lauren rated it:

05/28/08

Read in May, 2008

I'm not exactly sure why this book was in the YA section of the library since 1) the primary characters are all kids (though it's easy to forget this); and 2) there's really nothing too racy/scary/violent about it. Regardless, I guess I'm lucky that it WAS in the YA section because that's where I do most of my browsing and that's where I stumbled upon it!

Overall, this was a fun and intelligent book with many layers of meaning (I favorably compared it to The Phantom Tolbooth, though the tw...more

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book data (includes all editions)

avg rating (all editions): 4.05 (737 ratings)
avg rating (this edition): 4.04 (713 ratings)
number of reviews: 274

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