Book Review: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

The book that I chose to read for my English class is called The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart which happens to be the second book of the series. The type of prompt that I thought was interesting to talk about is the first one. The first prompt is about why the author wrote this book in the first place and what is the purpose of him writing it. In my opinion, one of the main purpose of writing this book is show the importance of friendship between a group of people:

“Constance, Kate, and Sticky were like family to him. It didn't matter that he'd met them only a year ago. Their friendship had formed under extraordinary circumstances.” (Page 2)

This kind of theme is really widespread in many famous books like in “Harry Potter” or in the “Lord of the Rings” and many more... Even though this kind of thing seems really cliché, I think this kind of main idea is essential for an adventure book. Does this mean that I'm saying that all adventure books have to have the main idea of friendship behind it in order for it to be good? No. Personally, I just like the cliché about friends helping one another because it makes me smile whenever I read those kind of books. The value of friendship should be appreciated by all readers because I think friendship is really important and I'm glad that there are still a lot of books out there that have this kind of idea behind it.

Another purpose why I think the author might have wrote this kind of book is that he wanted to write a book that is interesting and catches readers to enjoy reading something fun and interesting. There are many books that is like this, and I enjoyed every single one of them. One kind of writing style that the author of this book uses to make the book more intense and interesting is the way how he ends one chapter with a foreshadow or a cliffhanger:

“But whether Reynie needed it or not- and though he ad no way of predicting it- danger most certainly awaited him and his friends. And it would not be waiting long.” (Page 16)

This type of writing style really make me want to be more engage into a book. This is one of the main reasons why I would ever keep on reading a book until the very end without stopping at all. Overall, I believe the author of this book did a fantastic job on getting readers all around to be hooked onto The Mysterious Benedict Society series.

Another prompt that I decided to talk about for this book is the 8th one. The prompt says to pick a character that interested me, and I am to analyze he or she in depth. The character that I decided to analyze is Reynie Muldoon who happens to be one of the most important character in the book. The main reason why I chose Reynie as the character to analyze because of his unique traits that brings the book together. I would like to first start off talking about the basic description that the author of this book gave to him:

“He was an average-looking boy- with average brown eyes, legs of average length, nose an average distance from his ears, and so on- and he was entirely alone.” (Page 1-2)

This show that the author purposely make it seem that Reynie is a boring character, but I think there is good reason why the author did this in the first place. The reason is that by making Reynie Muldoon sound like an average person, all of the accomplishments that Reynie pulled off throughout the book would be put into more of an effect to the readers because the reader would have never expected an average person like Reynie can pull off something incredible. Reynie Muldoon also show deep compassion and love toward his friend:

"The most important thing. however, was that it had been half a year since he had seen his three closest friends." (Page 2)

In my opinion, these kind of characters are key to a good story because this kind of compassion coming from a character brings out a really important strength to he or she has. It can bring out confidence, courage, and hope from a character. In this book, the power of friendship between the children is a really strong one. It pushed all of them forward with the knowledge that each and every one of their friends are there to support one another. This trait of Reynie Muldoon enable to bring hope to his friends, and ultimately helped them overcome any hardship that bestowed them in their adventure.

In conclusion, this book was a really great read. I enjoyed everything about it. The plot, the characters, and the writing styles from this book was absolutely amazing. the author definitely got me hooked on all the way through from beginning to end. I can't wait to read the next book of this series!