The Metropolitans

Four kids named Madge, Walt, Joe, and Kiku find themselves one way or another at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where they try to help a Dr. Dashwood Beam and his assistant Miss Lake rescue a King Arthur manuscript from the hands of a thief. As gold paint from the manuscript gets on their hands, they find themselves with new powers, and they can hear the voices of Guinevere, King Arthur, Morgan Lafay, and Lancelot in their heads guiding them. Together, these four kids must try to discover clues in the museum and stop World War II.

I love this book because it is full of fractured fairy-tale fun, if you consider King Arthur a fairy tale. If you have ever read The Mysterious Benedict Society and liked it, then I think you will probably like this one, too. I found them similar. This book is filled with adventure and excitement, mystery and magic. I love reading about King Arthur and all the characters. I also like the mystery part because I’m the kind of person who loves to find clues in books and solve mysteries. Some of the characters I thought were ordinary people turn out to have magical, King Arthur-related secrets of their own. One thing I didn’t like about the book was that Joe, who went to a Native American school, was treated cruelly before he ran away. It made me uncomfortable, and I didn’t like reading that part. But other than that, I like pretty much everything. If you want to learn about King Arthur, read about cool powers like invisibility, and try to solve the mystery to stop World War II, you had better go to the bookstore and buy this book.