From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Although From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is not directly based on any of the author’s life experiences, there are some similarities. When she wrote From the Mixed-Up Files, her second novel, Elaine Lobl (E. L.) Konigsburg was living in a suburb of New York City and raising three children, who posed for her illustrations of Jamie, Claudia, and others in the novel; she often dropped her children off at the Metropolitan Museum of Art while she took art lessons in the city. According to her interviews and writings, Konigsburg came up with the novel’s central idea after several key experiences (Sauer, Patrick. “The True Story Behind Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Her Mixed-Up Files.” Smithsonian Magazine, 2017). One was a disastrous picnic with her children, which convinced her that if they ever ran away, it would be to somewhere comfortable. The second was a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where a stray piece of popcorn led her to speculate that someone had spent the night in the museum. In her afterword to the 35th-anniversary edition of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Konigsburg explains that she drew inspiration for Angel from a 1965 New York Times article about the Metropolitan Museum of Art cheaply acquiring at auction a Renaissance-era statue that may have been made by Leonardo da Vinci. By drawing from realistic elements, Konigsburg crafted a believable adventure story whose details accurately reflect the novel’s physical and temporal setting.

Beyond her inspirations, Konigsburg has also discussed her personal motivations for writing. In an interview, she explained that she often writes about children who are 12 years old because children at that age often explore competing desires to fit in and to be unique (Marcus, Leonard. “Interview with E.L. Konigsburg.” Wonderstruck. 11 Dec. 1997). This matches Claudia’s arc in the novel, as she seeks to differentiate herself before returning to her home life, which involves conformity to social norms and expectations. In the same interview, Konigsburg adds that writing fiction was, paradoxically, an act of documentation, of preserving the “middle-class suburban” lifestyle of her children. She also draws similarities between herself and Mrs. Frankweiler. Like Mrs. Frankweiler, Konigsburg is interested in science, having studied chemistry in college, and she also keeps track of important documents in file systems. The novel’s title, which identifies the book as an excerpt from Mrs. Frankweiler’s files, alludes to the story’s metafictional overtones by presenting the work itself as a pseudo-historical artifact.

Konigsburg won a Newbery Award for From the Mixed-Up Files in 1968, even as another one of her novels won a Newbery Honor that same year. She received a second Newbery Award in 1997 for The View from Saturday. Told from multiple perspectives, this latter novel follows a group of sixth-grade students who compete in an Academic Bowl with the help of their teacher, who was paralyzed after a recent accident. Within the overall arc of Konigsburg’s career, this demonstrates her enduring interest in the value of learning and the rich possibilities for student-teacher or student-mentor relationships.