Authors Who Need More Love: Trenton Lee Stewart

This might be shorter than usual, because I'm going out with friends in like forty-five minutes, sorry!

Photo cred here

Been looking for another good friendship-driven series now that Harry Potter's done? This is what you want.

Reynie Muldoon is an orphan from Stonetown. He's more interested in reading the paper than watching TV, so the other kids just kind of ostracize him. That quirk, though, is what leads him to his first ever friends.

He and his tutor, Miss Perumal, notice an advertisement aimed at brilliant kids one day, so they decide to have him go - what's the worst that could happen, a waste of a day? Before she can take him, though, Miss Perumal's mother falls ill, so Reynie has to go by himself to take the test.

Reynie passes the first test and every one subsequent, noticing that a lot of the tasks are actually riddles, not questions. Once he's done, he and three other kids - Sticky, Kate, and Constance - are left to meet Mr. Benedict, the man behind the tests. 

Cleverness is what got Reynie through the tests, but that can't be said for the others. Sticky's a genius, Kate's a daredevil who used to be in the circus (no, really), and Constance is stubborn and contrary. Together, they're the perfect team for what Mr. Benedict needs them to do: infiltrate the Institute, a mysterious school located on an island near Stonetown.

Why are they infiltrating? The headmaster of the Institute, Mr. Curtain, has a machine called the Whisperer that's putting subliminal messages into the media - radio and TV broadcasts, to be specific. Soon, though, he's not going to need the middleman. He'll be able to broadcast messages directly into people's heads. Reynie, Sticky, Kate, and Constance need to figure out where the Whisperer is and how to disable it before Mr. Curtain can get that far.

The kids' struggles with Mr. Curtain and his henchmen span the three main novels of this series, taking them around the world before ultimately landing them back in Stonetown. The fourth novel in this series focuses on Mr. Benedict as a child. (I haven't actually read it, so that's all I know.)

I legitimately adore this series. The kids are realistic - they're both precociously smart and childishly naive. The puzzles are also fun and challenging - I'm nearly a decade older than the characters, and sometimes I can't even figure out the riddles before they do. The story is also full of clever wordplay that brings a smile to my face - the Institute is located on "Nomansan Island," for example. Sound that out.

The only thing I have to say against these books is that sometimes they can be a little bit too sanitized, in my opinion. For example, the kids are taught not to kill any of Mr. Curtain's torture-loving henchmen, because they're better than that. I'm okay with not having tiny assassin children, don't get me wrong, but I think in situations like the kids get into, there's a decent chance that they'd have to try a kill shot if it really came down to an "us or them" decision.

(That sounds terribly callous of me, but I'm running out of time. I'll explain better later if you'd like.)

Overall, the three main MBS books get four stars from me. They're fun and captivating, and the kids remind me a lot of the Golden Trio from Harry Potter. Does it get much better than that?