Hard to believe, too

From a Guardian article on overlooked kids' classics by the editor of the Oxford Companion to Children's Lit, the amazing news that Mrs F is little known in Britain!

7. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler by EL Konigsburg 

This one’s an absolute classic in America, and has been since it won the prestigious Newbery medal almost half a century ago. Its fame is very widespread (just last week, in Italy, I met a publisher from Taiwan who named it her childhood favourite), but it’s mostly ignored here in the UK, and it shouldn’t be! It’s great. It’s the story of Claudia and Jamie, who run away from home and move instead into New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Mrs Frankweiler of the title, the book’s narrator, is a rich, elderly eccentric, who has sold the museum a renaissance statue which the children believe is by Michelangelo. Brilliant. Fortunately this one’s being reissued by a British publisher this year, and you can see for yourself.