The Mysterious Benedict Society is a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Trenton Lee Stewart

Trenton Lee Stewart

Trenton Lee Stewart is an American author best known for the Mysterious Benedict Society series. Stewart is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop...

 and illustrated by Carson Ellis

Carson Ellis

Carson Friedman Ellis is an artist living in Portland, Oregon. She is best known for her children's book illustrations and her album art.- Career :...

, first published in 2007.

Plot summary

After seeing a newspaper article addressed to children with special gifts, eleven-year old Reynard Muldoon goes to a center where he and many other children take a written test with many strange questions relating to logic, bravery, etc. He is the only one in the room to pass this exam, and, after all the other children leave, he is invited to another center for more tests. He goes to the Monk Building at 12:00, and meets Rhonda, a distressed girl who lost her only pencil for the test. Reynard breaks his pencil in half and gives half to Rhonda to use, and Rhonda offers him the answers to the test they're about to take. Reynard refuses this, and walks into the testing area. There, he and many other children sit in separated desks, each getting a test. All of the test questions are impossibly hard. Reynard notices that the questions are a puzzle in which the answer to the questions are imbedded in the in the other questions.

Because of the logic and skill he showed, Reynard together with three other children named George "Sticky" Washington, a boy with photographic memory, Kate Wetherall, a resourceful and agile girl, and Constance Contraire, a stubborn little girl who likes to recite couplets, is later (after yet more tests, all of which have tricks to being solved inside the instructions) invited to the home of Mr. Benedict a kind, clever, middle aged man suffering from narcolepsy, who presents them all with a task to do. He tells them that by using subliminal messaging hidden in television, radio, cell phone signals, and almost any other signal that travels through the air, a man acting as a "Sender" can make people believe things causing them to imagine that there is an "Emergency" where there isn't one. One example of a hidden message is "The missing aren't missing, they've only departed", which causes people to ignore the disappearances of others. Mr. Benedict tells them that the one sending these messages is a Mr. Curtain, the principal of L.I.V.E. (The Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened; if you read it backwards it spells E.V.I.L.), a school on an island off the coast of their city of Stonetown. Mr. Benedict asks the children to act as his spies at the Institute, gain "special privileges", given only to high ranking students, and, if possible, destroy the machine sending the messages.

Inside the Institute the children see strange people - the Helpers, who refuse to answer questions about themselves and always seem sad, and Mr. Curtain himself, who turns out to be Mr. Benedict's long-lost twin brother. The lessons are very repetitive, and there are in fact rules although the Executives who run the school say that there aren't any. Communicating with Mr. Benedict via Morse Code with a flashlight, the children uncover the hideous plan of Mr. Curtain, to control the people of the world and to imprison his enemies.

The children manage to stall Mr. Curtain's plan and make him fall asleep (Mr. Curtain also suffers from narcolepsy), allowing Mr. Benedict to shut down the Whisperer, Mr. Curtain's machine which allows him to transmit the hidden messages through different materials like television (and possibly erase memories from people's minds). Though Mr. Curtain escapes, the children share a party together with Constance, who is celebrating her third birthday (the others did not previously know that she was so young), although her birthday is actually a month away.

Characters

• Reynard "Reynie" Muldoon is an eleven-year-old boy living at Stonetown Orphanage. He is exceptionally talented at problem solving, logical deduction, and reading people's emotions, and his brains have resulted in the assignment of a special tutor, Miss Perumal. Reynie looks between the lines, observing and questioning, and gets past most obstacles by finding the "puzzle" within the situation. He is described as an especially average-looking boy with average brown hair, average pale complexion, and average clothes.
• George "Sticky" Washington is a dark-skinned boy with a bald head. He is also eleven. He has a prodigious photographic memory and a talent for speed-reading. He is, however, timid and nervous and resorts to polishing his glasses in stressful situations. He ran away from his parents because they forced him into academic competitions and because he later had reason to think that they no longer wanted him around at all. He also has the special ability in which everything he reads "sticks" in his head.
• Kate "The Great Kate Weather Machine" Wetherall is a twelve-year-old girl who is resourceful and athletic, possessing extreme agility skills and dexterity bordering on the superhuman. She has blonde hair and fair skin. She carries a red bucket containing various items, including a Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, a pen light, rope, a bag of marbles, a slingshot, a spool of clear fishing twine, one pencil and eraser, a horseshoe magnet and a spyglass disguised as a kaleidoscope. She is very cheerful and optimistic. Kate's mother died when she was a baby, and she believes that her father abandoned her.
• Constance Contraire is a small, extremely intelligent, precocious, stubborn and often unpleasant girl. She has the ability to write clever and whimsical poems, and her ultra-sensitive mind is also the most severely affected by the hidden messages transmitted by the Whisperer. At the end of the book she is adopted by Mr. Benedict. Also three years old.
• Ledroptha Curtain is the antagonist of the story and the head of the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened (L.I.V.E.). Mr. Curtain created the Whisperer and other inventions in order to brainsweep all the world's minds, as part of a scheme in which he will control the world and be declared "Minister And Secretary of all The Earth's Regions" (M.A.S.T.E.R.) Partway through the story, he is revealed to be Mr. Benedict's twin brother. He uses a modified wheelchair to get around, due to his narcolepsy, a condition he shares with his brother. However, unlike his brother, his narcolepsy is triggered by anger, whereas Mr. Benedict's narcolepsy is triggered by happiness and laughing.
• Mr. Benedict- the person who started the whole thing and brought the children together. He is the one who wants to stop Ledroptha Curtain's Whisperer. He has narcolepsy
  Narcolepsy
  Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder, or dyssomnia, characterized by excessive sleepiness and sleep attacks at inappropriate times, such as while at work. People with narcolepsy often experience disturbed nocturnal sleep and an abnormal daytime sleep pattern, which often is confused with insomnia...
  
   like his twin, which is triggered by feeling strong emotion. He is very reluctant to let the children go on a dangerous mission, but when reminded there is no other way, he lets them go. He leaves a note to the reader at the end of the book saying that to find his first name, "if you are acquainted with the code, the I assure you that the answer lies within your grasp. "The key word in the note to the Reader is "code" and the phrase "answer lies within your grasp." In hardback versions of the book, a Morse Code
  Morse code
  Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
  
   sequence appears on the inside of the book jacket underneath the author's name and blurb, literally where a typical reader would be holding the book. In paperback versions, there is a Morse Code sequence on the back cover of the book, underneath the plot description.
• Milligan is the guard for the children when they enter L.I.V.E and for Rhonda, Number Two, and Mr. Benedict. He is a sad and somber man, even described as a "scarecrow" owing to his shabby and depressing demeanor. His sadness is attributed to his kidnapping by secret agents working for Mr. Curtain, after which he lost all of his past memories, due to the Whisperer. He claimed, in one chapter where he was asked why he was sad, that he felt comfortable about the name "Milligan", and that it is because it seems familiar to him. He has flax blond hair and ocean blue eyes.
• Number Two is one of Mr. Benedict's assistants. She is always referred to by her code name, despite Mr. Benedict telling her that her real name is fine. (Readers discover her real name in the third book.) She is said to have a 'pencil like' appearance, (which is also a pun on the common yellow #2 pencil) complete with a yellow complexion, rusty red hair, and yellow clothes. She passed Mr. Benedict's tests several years ago, and was later adopted by Mr. Benedict. She almost never sleeps because she is always trying to watch Mr. Benedict in case he falls asleep due to narcolepsy. She is able to stay up to watch Mr.Benedict because she is eating all the time to keep herself up.
• Rhonda Kazembe is also a former student, but was adopted by Mr. Benedict just like Number Two. She is very small, giving her the ability to pose as a student during Mr. Benedict's tests, and offer (false) answers to any child who will take them. Therefore, if they agreed to cheat, they would not pass the quiz. Like Number Two, she also tries to watch for Mr. Benedict's Narcoleptic attacks

Supporting characters

• S.Q. Pedalian An Executive working for Mr. Curtain. He is known to be a klutz, but even though he is clumsy, he happens to be the only Executive who is kind to the Mysterious Benedict Society. However, he is somewhat oblivious to the dangerous effects L.I.V.E and the Whisperer have on the world's inhabitants. The author is prone to word play throughout the novel including using locations like Nomansan Island (which could be read as: No Man's an Island, a literary reference to the John Donne
  John Donne
  John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
  
   statement which also has thematic reference to Reynie's problems in the novel), the careful reader should be aware of the literary reference of S.Q.'s name and his character (including his stated shoe size of 15) to the word sesquipedalian, which translates from Latin as "a foot and a half long."
• Jackson A Head Executive who is unkind, rude, and cruel towards people lower than him.
• Jillson A Head Executive with an"I am better than you" attitude. Her reputation is like Jackson's, as she is rude, mean, and cruel.
• Martina Crowe is a teenager with long black hair. She is a Messenger at the Institute first, but later on is promoted to the position of Executive by Mr. Curtain even though he does not trust her much. She despises the members of the Mysterious Benedict Society because Sticky and Reynie got better grades than she did, threatening her position as Messenger (since there can only be a limited amount.) She also dislikes Kate because Kate stands up to her and is not afraid of her.
• Miss Perumal She is Reynie's tutor, of Indian extraction, and is intelligent and friendly. She is the only person who is kind to Reynie at the orphanage. She also speaks Tamil, which she teaches Reynie during their lessons. At the end of the novel, she adopts Reynie.
• Mr. Rutger is the Stonetown Orphanage director. Blinded by greed, he wouldn't let any children in the orphanage go to an advanced school in order to retain funding he received per child.

Sequels

Two sequels (the second and third books in the series) were published in 2008 and 2009: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey is a bestselling children's novel written by Trenton Lee Stewart and illustrated by Diana Sudyka, published in 2008. It is the second book in the series, following The Mysterious Benedict Society....

and The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma is a 2009 children's novel. It is the third book in The Mysterious Benedict Society series.-Plot summary:...

.

A prequel,The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict, is expected to be released in spring 2012.

External links

• An interview with the author, Trenton Lee Stewart
• The official website for The Mysterious Benedict Society