Claudia is a straight-A student and an ambitious girl, taking lots of extracurricular lessons like violin and art appreciation. She also loves luxuries like hot fudge sundaes and long baths she gets cranky when she’s tired, cold, or sweaty. The only problem is that Claudia hates being uncomfortable, so she chooses the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan as her hiding place. She will return home after the rest of her family has learned to appreciate her and her parents have stopped such “injustices” as making her do chores and giving her a meager allowance. Tired of her monotonous life in Greenwich, Connecticut and the responsibilities of life as the oldest sibling and only girl, Claudia decides she wants to run away to New York City, taking her second-youngest brother, Jamie, along with her. In addition to being an interesting and entertaining story, the novel deals with some important issues of growing up, making it a doubly valuable book to read.Claudia is the novel’s protagonist and, at almost 12, the eldest of the four Kincaid children. She learns about herself, and in her interactions with nine-year-old Jamie, whom she chooses to accompany her, she realizes the value and the pleasure one finds in teamwork, even when the other member of the team is one's brother.

Her experience in the museum, which ultimately leads to a resolution of her problems, establishes her maturity. Tired of the arguments over television shows, weary of being responsible for her youngest brother, and basically upset because she is growing up on the inside but getting no recognition for it on the outside, Claudia has important reasons for getting away from it all. Claudia, like many another bright eleven-year-old, feels unappreciated by her family. In short, for sheer entertainment value, this book has much to recommend it.īut its appeal goes beyond entertainment, for Konigsburg develops believable characters with whom young people can identify. Anyone who appreciates a mystery will be attracted to the enigma of Angel, which Claudia feels compelled to solve, even though it has baffled the museum experts.

Anyone who likes adventure will admire the thoroughness and resourcefulness with which Claudia Kincaid plans and executes her escape from Greenwich, Connecticut, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Anyone who has ever wanted to run away to escape the trials and injustices of family life will identify with Claudia, who chafes under the outrage of a small allowance and the responsibility of being the eldest child in a family with three younger boys.

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