First Quarter Outside Reading Book Review

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, Little, Brown and Company, 1976. Genre: Mystery novel.
The Mysterious Benedict Society is a novel that is very intriguing and interesting. I would say that there are a lot of big characters but the main protagonist is a boy named Reynie Muldoon. The setting is a city called Stonetown near a port called Stonetown Harbor. The conflict is that an evil genius is trying to take over the world by brainwashing people's minds. Four kids try to stop him by going to an institute which the evil man owns in order to get close to him and find out what he's up to.. The whole book is about trying to stop him and save the world from being brainwashed.
The people from Booklist say, “Like the Potter books, his story goes beyond mere adventures, delving into serious issues.” I agree with Booklist because when I read this book, I couldn't put it down and I would always have to read one more chapter. This book is like the Harry Potter series because both make you want to read another chapter or page. Then you always hate when the book ends.
Reynie Muldoon took three consecutive tests in Stonetown and aced all of them. The trick to each test was that you didn't really need to know the answer, you needed to find a pattern in the test. Reynie meets three other people who passed the tests, and they become really good friends. One of these friends, however, is really stubborn, which comes in handy at the end. All four friends go to this Institute run by an evil genius to try to stop him from taking over the world. This story reminds me of Nancy Drew books because they're both mysterious and her clues are usually patterns just like these clues. The writing in The Mysterious Benedict Society is in third person omniscient because the author knows what's going on in everyone's mind.
A quote that gives a sense of the writing style is on page 338, “The wall swung closed behind them, and immediately a light came on overhead.” This tells you that there are a lot of secret things happening in the book because usually a door would open, but in this case, the wall does. It also indicates that the place they're in is very high tech because the lights turn on automatically. This shows that the man who owns the institute must be smart in order for the lights to work this way. This quote might grab readers who are interested and like mystery books.
I really like this book because some of it is scary, funny and very interesting. I like any kind of mystery, but ones that make you figure out patterns are especially cool. I also like how the author develops everything in the story and has really good diction. He uses rich vocabulary and even includes Morse code so that you learn along with the characters. Since Trenton Lee Stewart is such a good writer I'm going to read the next book in the series. It's called the Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey. I hope it's as good as the first one.