Pub Date: Sept. Show all comments. More by Louis Sachar. New York Times Bestseller. IndieBound Bestseller. Harding-Pencroft Academy guide, cast list Adventure. Pub Date: Oct. Page Count: Publisher: Disney-Hyperion. More by Rick Riordan. Please sign up to continue. Almost there! Reader Writer Industry Professional. He has a severe disability that has left him dependent on a wheelchair for transportation. He is also barely able to speak or control his body movements. He enjoys birdwatching and is lonely for company.
Doug Hoo: Also a high school senior, he is a track star with Olympic dreams. He likes to tease Turtle, but is most concerned with running. Berthe Crowe: A Salvation Army soup kitchen volunteer who dresses in all black, she is obsessed with sin and its penalty.
She is frequently snobbish, adores Angela, and has little patience with Turtle or her husband. James Shin Hoo: He owns the Chinese restaurant at the top of the apartment building. Jake Wexler: A fun-loving guy who exasperates his wife.
Judge J. Ford: A judge on the appellate court, she has a grudge against the Westing millionaire. Each of the 16 heirs are called to the Westing mansion after it is announced that the famous inventor, Samuel Westing is dead. Only the reader has all of the clues available, and certain solutions may present themselves right away.
The Westing Game is a young adult book, though when I read it I was about 8 years old so young adult could be a bit of a stretch there. It centers around 6 families who have received anonymous invitations to tour and rent Sunset Towers, a luxury apartment complex with a view of the Westing estate — a mansion with an owner who disappeared years before in the wake of a tragic car crash that left his friend crippled and battered Westing.
Not long after the 6 families have moved into Sunset Towers, they are summoned to a reading of the will of Mr. Sam Westing, having each been named as his living heirs following the discovery of his dead body within the Westing mansion. As a man who loved games of all sorts, Westing chose to give his guests clues that must be unscrambled to solve the mystery of his death and discover the alleged murderer or murderess. What follows is a fun, imaginative Clue type murder mystery complete with explosions, deaths, and secret identities.
My Advice : As a kid, I read this book with great interest, marveling at the clues as they played out and attempting to solve the mystery before it was revealed at the finale. The biggest giveaway would be the fact that in this genre slightly grown-up kids aka young adults are always unfailingly smarter than the actual adults. I can understand it: in children books the adults are treated as guardians, teachers, etc.
If you want to ponder to teenagers with their rebellious phase of growing up we all came through this , you want to show them to be the smart ones. I can accept this. By the way, in case you know of an exception to this rule please inform me as I cannot think of any. What I do not accept is the condescending tone of YA literature. For some reason in children books the readers often treated as equals making them better and more satisfying reads for me - an adult who left his teen years behind a long time ago.
The book was guilty of this. Last piece of criticism. I hate rapid changes of POVs with the passion. Here they would often change after just one paragraph making the whole story look like a series in disconnected scenes.
I like the idea of "tell, do not show", but here is was taken to the extreme adding to the feeling of disconnection between what was actually shown and not told. However after all the mud slinging I did, I liked the book well enough not to get too bored I only got frustrated from time to time and I have not regrets about reading it.
The rating is 3 stars. Anti-YA rant mode off. View 1 comment. Mar 20, Isaac Blevins rated it really liked it Recommends it for: children, children at heart, puzzle fans. Shelves: ya-literature. I read this little book for the first time not as a child - but as an adult. I was looking for a book to kick off our Junior High book club and picked up the Westing Game to see if it might be a good place to begin.
I wish that I had found this book earlier in my life. What kid wouldn't be captivated by wonderful characters thrown together to play a game hosted by a dead millionaire? Don't get me wrong Westing isn't a vampire or a zombie - he's just decided that his heirs need to do a lit I read this little book for the first time not as a child - but as an adult.
Westing isn't a vampire or a zombie - he's just decided that his heirs need to do a little puzzle solving in order to earn their share of his estate. While the mystery and the puzzles are fun and wonderfully clever, it's the characters that really make this novel. All of the characters reside and work in the same high rise apartment building within view of the looming Westing estate. Getting snowed in with them is like being trapped with the most interesting people you could imagine - both good and bad.
By the end of the novel it's almost like you're part of a family reunion you know these people so well. Do yourself a favor - if you're a kid: pick up this book and have a wonderful time! View all 7 comments. Nov 08, Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it Shelves: fiction , united-states , mystery , 20th-century , young-adult , classics. Sunset Towers is a new apartment building on Lake Michigan, north of Milwaukee and just down the shore from the mansion owned by reclusive self-made millionaire Samuel W.
As the story opens, Barney Northrup is selling apartments to a carefully selected group of tenants. He claims that chess is not allowed in the building. This is a big clue, as Sam Westing loved chess. After Sam Westing dies, at the beginning of the book, it emerges that most of the tenants are named as heirs in Westing's will.
The will is structured as a puzzle, with the 16 heirs challenged to find the solution. It is discovered that Berthe Erica Crow is the answer but not the murderer. In the end, unknown to the other players, Turtle Wexler wins the game and inherits Sam Westing's company. I don't know how I would have approached this as a child or young adult, but it made me laugh at so many different stages! My brain is still feeling a little tingly. I never knew what was going to happen next, and I have a feeling that exactly the way Raskin would have wanted it.
Can't wait to read more of her books. I think she wrote for the adult in children. She never disrespected them or 'wrote down,' because she didn't know how. View 2 comments. Jul 08, Mary rated it did not like it Shelves: mystery-crime-fiction , children-s. I don't understand why this book won a Newbery Award. It was confusing and sort of awful. Additionally, for today's reader, it felt extremely dated and had some remarks in it that I would call "un-politically correct. The person who first solves the mystery wins the inheritance.
Clues are given along the way, but I'm not sure whether or not the reader was suppos I don't understand why this book won a Newbery Award. Clues are given along the way, but I'm not sure whether or not the reader was supposed to be able to solve the mystery. I wouldn't recommend this and I feel bad for kids who have to read it as an assignment. View all 11 comments. Mar 09, Diane rated it really liked it Shelves: favorites , childrens.
This was one of my favorite children's books, and I decided to reread it by listening to it on audio. What a delight!
The mystery held up really well, and Diane the Adult had fun following the clues being dropped. I had forgotten some of the twists in the story, which made it even more fun, and I was happy with the ending, which I had conveniently forgotten.
I can't remember how old I was when I first read this book, but I do remember loving it so much that I wrote a letter to the author on an el This was one of my favorite children's books, and I decided to reread it by listening to it on audio. I can't remember how old I was when I first read this book, but I do remember loving it so much that I wrote a letter to the author on an electric typewriter.
However, when I looked at Ellen Raskin's bio page on Wikipedia, it says she died in when she was just 56, so she was likely already gone while I was typing out my admiration for her work. Ellen, wherever you are, thanks for writing such a clever book for children.
When I was young, reading that book made me feel like a grownup, and as an adult, reading the book made me feel like a kid again. Cheers to you. I read this with some friends who eschew pantalones.
I'd never heard of this book before, despite it being a book for children that was available when I was a child. I think, had I read this way back when, I likely would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did reading it now as a woman who once rode a dinosaur around town, probably.
The premise is such: A very rich man leaves a will naming 16 people as his heirs, but only the one who solves The Mystery tm will inherit all of the money that exists I read this with some friends who eschew pantalones. The premise is such: A very rich man leaves a will naming 16 people as his heirs, but only the one who solves The Mystery tm will inherit all of the money that exists. There's a lot going on in this book.
There's a diverse cast. There's a mystery. Of sorts. But what there isn't, at least in my opinion, is cohesion and sense. This book has an ever shifting 3rd person limited Point-of-view narrative structure, sort of stream of consciousness, if we the reader existed in the story as a telepathic fly.
We flit around and pick up snippets of conversation and thoughts As a reader, there are a lot of ownerless thoughts just hanging out in this book, and it bugged me. See what I did there? On top of that, this book makes use of the dialogue as action style that I really loathe, AND it lacks narrative transitional structure.
So one minute we'll have someone saying "Go upstairs and say hello. At one point, one of the characters is in the hospital recovering from an injury. Throughout the time that this character is there, characters just show up, and then show up back at their apartment complex randomly, as though the hospital is IN the building - which it is not. Including a 13 year old child. Just "Oh, we're at this place now. Annnnnd now we're not again?
It was just a jumble of words surrounding a mystery that all of the characters were trying to solve The mystery laid out in the will was not as it seemed, and the real solution was to a question that was never asked and a mystery that was never mentioned.
It all seemed laid out and planned from the outset, and the level of prep-work required would have been astronomical. And I'm left feeling confused and dissatisfied with the end of the book because it seems like a huge amount of work The end result could have been accomplished much, much, much easier without all the subterfuge and trickery, and it would have actually been much more kind as well. I just It didn't work for me. For all that it's less than pages, it took me AGES to read it because the style just killed my interest every time I picked it up.
I was determined to finish, and so I did, but I don't feel like it was worth it. It's a shame, because this book has great reviews, and I had hoped to enjoy it, but it wasn't to be. View all 9 comments.
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