Reynie Muldoon is an orphan, but he doesn’t feel particularly bad about it because he’s never known anything different. He lives in a large orphanage filled with children who ignore him, and his only friend is his tutor. She’s a kindly older woman who has taken Reynie into her heart, and it’s a good thing, too, otherwise no one would love him at all.
One morning while reading the paper, they spy an ad for children of unusual abilities. Just what these abilities are supposed to be, the ad doesn’t say, but Reynie is curious. He decides to go in and take the test, only to discover page after page of impossible questions. He soon figures out that it’s a trick, however, and zooms through the rest of it without difficulty. The rest of the tests each have some sort of trick connected to them, but not everyone “gets” it, and in the end, only four children are left: Reynie, a girl named Kate, a boy named Sticky, and a very tiny girl named Constance.
These four children are introduced to Mr. Benedict, who has hit upon a plan devised by an evil man to brainwash the world. Messages are being sent out over the airwaves that are meant to demoralize the people and make them feel hopeless, and they’re being taped in the voices of children, which are less threatening. Mr. Benedict has a dangerous plan – he wants the children to infiltrate the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened – a fancy name for an orphanage – where the transmissions are coming from. Only children can carry this off, and he needs children that can figure their way out of any circumstance.
The children realize the danger the world could be in if this evil plan were to go forth, so they agree. What they don’t realize is just how much each of them will be tested before they’re finished.
I greatly enjoyed this book. I then passed it on to my husband, and he really liked it too. It’s imaginative, creative, full of suspense – all the things we like in a book. We highly recommend it for your fifth grade reader on up.
(This book was published in 2007 by Little, Brown.)
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