This book is more for middle school students or fifth graders. It is intense at parts and has some plot twists that could be hard to track. The story is about four kids taking tests to be picked for a special mission.

After passing a series of mind-bending tests, four children are selected for a secret mission that requires them 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 underground tunnels of the school is more than your average school supplies.

Read this one because I saw a series or maybe movie of it is coming to Disney . Warning: this review has MAJOR spoilers so don’t read ahead of you don’t want things ruined.

Fun book about kids acting as secret agents at a school for the “exceptionally gifted” where a Big Bad has plans to brainwash everybody.

Good - but then it became uncomfortably real when the brainwashing plan started to sound just like Trump and Fox News! I was NOT expecting that, let me tell you. (And this book is from 2007 so it’s not intentional.)

Seriously - does this sound like the modem GOP to you?



“The Emergency is the first step,” Reynie said, thumping the paper. “Mr. Curtain thinks fear is the most important element in human personality, remember? It’s why the Whisperer has so much appeal to Messengers—it soothes their fears, and Mr. Curtain uses that to motivate them. So what if he created a fear, a fear everyone would hold in common, a fear the entire public would share?”

“The fear that everything is hopelessly out of control,” Kate said. “Exactly! Then his next step would be to soothe that fear with just the right message. The Messengers all love the Whisperer with a passion, right? Well, Mr. Curtain intends to make it so that everyone in the world will feel the way Messengers do!” “Everyone will love the Whisperer?” Sticky said. “No,” Reynie said. “Everyone will love him.””

— The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
https://a.co/hqXTu9o ( )

I mostly liked this book, although it dragged a bit in the middle, the characters were interesting and bit unusual, and the plot fairly dystopian. I really liked the literary references, like the Pippi Longstocking character and the dark themes and references to George Orwell's 1984. Despite this it is clear why this book is very accessible to youth readers and so popular with the tweens. ( )