On Wednesday, I recently went to the juvenille section of my local library just to find books that be a mixture of both "Young Adult" and "Independent Reader" literature. Glancing through the Newbery Award Winners I decided to pick one. I chose The Westing Game written by Ellen Raskin. Overall, I was not at all impressed by this book. I do not know why this would be have chosen for "young readers." While there are some children as main protagonists in this book, this was mostly an adult book. This book had murder, theivery, child ignorance, and bombs. I feel in a way that this book was nominated for a Newbery Award with the same mindset that "oh it has children involved, it must be okay for Children then." I do not at all think that this is true. There are many movies written with child protagonists such as The Sixth Sense, The Client, and Mercury Rising where there are children involved with it however it has a pure adult context. Needless to say, I was not exactly impressed with this book. I did like the main child protagonist, Turtle, however, I did not enjoy Ellen Raskin's writing style of assuming that the reader exactly knows what the protagonists is feeling. It is also like reading first person point of view intermingled with third point of view. I think that this is extremely frustrating for the reader. However this is all in my mild opinion.
Summary: The Westing Game is a novel that begins with six families being invited to stay at the new and illustrious Sunset Towers apartments. This is an apartment that can only be rented by invitation only, and there is a mix of people that stay there. A self proclaimed heiress, a Chinese Restaurant owner, a cafe owner, a track runner, a mental handicapped individual, a child stock market prodigy, a bookie, and several other characters. These people all live ina polite harmony with one another until one day, the abandoned mansion which is located near the apartments, chimney begins to smoke. There is an invite for these families to be six heirs to the Westing Fortune if they can solve the puzzle. Each pair is given clues and together, they must find how to inherit the Westing House fortune. This novel is a bizzare set-up which while interesting,l is complicated and often confusing.
Genre Level: Mystery, Suspense
Awards: The Westing Game won the 1979 John Newbery Medal for distinguished writing for children from the American Library Association, the 1978 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Best Fiction for Children, and the 1979 Banta Award for writing excellence in a general literary competition of the Wisconsin Library Association.
(Taken from: http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/authors/raskin/intro.htm)
If you like this, then you would like...: The Nancy Drew series (Nancy Drew is WAY better), Veronica Mars, The Hardy Boys,
Reading Level: Fifth Grade Level and Above, has mature content including bombings, death, murder, false accusations, Lawyer details
Themes: Self Actualization, Death, "Playing with fire," Child Neglect, Selfishness, Love
Annotation: Raskin, Ellen. (1978). The Westing Game. E.P. Dutton
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/contributor/ellen-raskin'
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