Children live in a museum -- help me find this book!

April 1, 2008 4:59 AM

Children run away from home and live in a museum -- help me remember this book!

there was a novel from my elementary school days in which children, I think maybe a brother and a sister, ran away from home to live in a museum. They came out at night after the museum closed, and foraged for loose change from what people tossed into a fountain for good luck.

Do you know the name of this book?

posted by NucleophilicAttack to writing & language (10 comments total)

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Ta da!
posted by different at 5:02 AM on April 1, 2008

That is one of my favorite books of all time. It won the Newberry Medal all the way back in 1968! (I had no idea; it seemed so modern when I read it in the 1980s). Thanks for reminding me of it.
posted by bluefly at 5:23 AM on April 1, 2008

That's it! Thanks guys! :-)
posted by NucleophilicAttack at 5:30 AM on April 1, 2008

That book is one of my all-time favourites too! I still wish I could live in a museum, but at least I get to work in one now! There are lots of museums now that have sleepovers, which is really rather cool.
posted by Kirjava at 6:46 AM on April 1, 2008

As an aside, I remember this as a movie, did it have the same name? Google says "The Hideaways", no?
posted by yodelingisfun at 6:53 AM on April 1, 2008

Margot and Richie Tenenbaum do this as children in The Royal Tenenbaums. They're brother and adopted sister.
posted by tiny crocodile at 6:58 AM on April 1, 2008

Yes, it was a movie too, known by the book title in the US and as 'The Hideaways' in the UK apparently- it's on IMDB.
posted by Kirjava at 7:11 AM on April 1, 2008

I ducked in here hoping that I'd be your hero...the only person at Mefi who remembers this book.

*Sigh* I'm nobody's hero today.
posted by SlyBevel at 3:28 PM on April 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

great book
posted by Large Marge at 5:01 PM on April 1, 2008

My parents were friends with E L Konigsburg when I was a kid. I used to ride my bike over to her house and visit her during elementary school. I was allowed to read a little of her first draft of "The Dragons in the Ghetto Caper", though I did not realize its significance (that I was reading a FIRST DRAFT) as a kid.
posted by wittgenstein at 5:19 PM on April 1, 2008