The Westing Game (Puffin Modern Classics)

Our 5th grade teacher read this book to us as part of our reading class; that was over 40 years ago, and I still remembered parts of the book. But I couldn't remember the title! Praise God for Google and AI in the 21st century, because I input the little bits I DID remember, and voila! My 2nd trip through the book was almost as fun as the first one, mostly because it was a walk down memory lane AND I didn't fully remember the climax / outcome! With perhaps a little explanation to your 5th grader about how things worked before cell phones and social media, this book should be a fun bit of suspense.

This book will make you keep qustioning and feeling thrilled until the end. Highly recommended for anyone who seeks mysteries.

This was a fun little mystery! I heard about this book in another book and I'm glad I marked it and decided to check it out. I had fun playing along and trying to solve the mystery.

The Westing Game mystery is contained in format font placement scansion visual cues and only genuinely comprehensible in print How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading Mortimer Adler The Great Books THE GREAT IDEAS PROGRAM: A General Introduction to the Great Books and to a Liberal Education [10 Volume set ]. Westing Game bridges the gap between infant picture books and word books for beginning readers before they tackle paragraph books transposed onto 5th grade and above developmental reading transitions. Instead of photos or illustrations, visual intricacy (and devious deceit) is hidden in bookbinding terms: font (bold vs plain), paragraph separators (dots white space) and very sneaky interruptions in the dialogue which provide visual clues on the page which can be only detected by being seen. We read this book repeatedly as a Halloween tradition, and I find that appreciation for the ingenious allusions, clues and easily missed tantalizing information only increase on repeated reading during adulthood. Sydelle's painted crutches are intuitive clues from a very intelligent but lonely woman. The psychological portraits of the characters are revealed like peeling onions layer by layer, first superficial appearances, then deeper emotions, and finally hidden behaviors: bookie, bomber, thief, inventor, social climber, chess player, imposter. I am a bookbinder calligrapher Literacy Through the Book Arts Paul Johnson, By J. A. Szirmai - The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding (New Edition) (1999-08-16) [Hardcover ], journaler The Story of Writing Donald Jackson, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts Christopher de Hamel and journaler Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, The . Westing Game is a contemporary non-illustrated book which utilizes the visual device of manipulating words on the page for sly commentary, a technique common in medieval hand bound books via illumination. At first I limited myself to only the first chapter, stopped to draw a map of Westingtown, the floor plans of each of the 5 stories of Sunset Towers, cut out magazine photos to represent each of the characters which gathered all the information together before I embarked on the second chapter. I discovered at the end of the book that the entire mystery was contained in the first sentence of the first chapter, and was well elaborated through the first chapter. But I could not know that before reading the entire book. Adler suggests reading a book slowly, marking underlining, posing questions which puzzle the first time around. Then rereading a second time with a different color pen, new questions. Why does Sunset Towers face East? 5* not just for the brain tickling written mystery but the visual delight of a well planned and thought out book print design. The Avon Flare version has a trio of portraits to get the mind thinking in visual terms: Turtle in witch's gear, Chris with birdwatching binoculars, Chef Theodorakis.

This is a great story, loads of puzzling fun. My 6th graders were excited to follow the clues, and we had some great debates about the story. But this particular edition is terribly disappointing. The font size is very small, and the pages have narrow margins and not much white space. Maybe the publisher was trying to economize on costs of paper and shipping weight, but the reader suffers. I can imagine a kid opening this edition and seeing tiny, nearly edge-to-edge print, and saying, "It's too hard. I don't want to read that." I ended up buying a digital edition to avoid the eye strain.

I bought The Westing Game for my teen as another way to encourage more reading, and it was a hit. The mystery is smart, fast-paced, and fun to follow — perfect for keeping a young reader’s attention. The paperback version is easy to carry around and great for school or travel. A great addition to any teen’s growing book collection, especially if they like puzzles, twists, and quirky characters.

The word variety sums up this book nicely. There are sixteen main characters, and for the most part they all come from very different backgrounds and have very different personalities. True, there isn't much room in the book for each character to be developed on more than just a few traits, like a tendency to kick people, a permanent stutter, or a habit of unwrapping candy bars, but for the design of this children's story, these limited traits are sufficent. The author seems to get unlimited enjoyment in being some kind of practical joker. She does her best to constantly throw the reader off track using the eccentric will of the master of all practical jokers, Mr. Fourth of July himself, Samuel Westing. Raskin reminds me of Andy Kaufman in her manner, and this is a big reason I like her Newbery book. Events and statements that defy logic are everywhere, even in the first few sentences. It's all about mind games. I only have two real complaints (well, one that's real and another that's a minor annoyance). First complaint - the whole bomber thing makes no sense whatsoever. In a universe where clever explanations heal the scars of dozens of apparent contradictions, the bomber plot line stands out as a gaping mortal wound that's never treated. WHY did the bomber set off bombs? With no legitimate explanation, a reader can only conclude that the plot line is a disappointing attempt to pad out the much more interesting and polished Westing murder story. Second complaint (annoyance) - too many people are successful at the end of the story, and I think this goes against the laws of probability. But this is a traditional characteristic in books for children, and it's no doubt designed to encourage more than educate. Only a true stick-in-the-mud like myself will find any offense in the long term success of the likeable characters. Although not on par with the great Sherlock Holmes, The Westing Game is still pretty impressive. Expected twists and turns in plot are well done, but I think the variety of the cast is what made the Westing Game a true stand-out work. Unlike Disneyland where you have maybe eight different smaller lands to visit, here you have sixteen.

quality good. My daughter's teacher recommended reading.

I could not stop reading this book! THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin is a phenomenal mystery, and I’m actually in awe of how good it is. As I was reading it, I kept forgetting it’s a novel as it seemed more like a puzzle, and the writing style is just amazing. It’s one of the children’s titles for my postgrad creative writing course, but it reminded me so much of Virginia Woolf’s style. I actually googled the book to see if it’s taught to children at schools (or just used for degree level courses) because of this almost stream-of-consciousness style and complexity, with so many beautiful nuanced layers. It’s recommended for ages 10 and upward, and I have since learnt it's taught widely in US schools, but as a UK reader, I hadn't heard of this book at all--and here it often seems only to be taught to adults as an example of how children’s stories should be as complex as adult stories, as obviously you shouldn’t “write down” to children. It will give great satisfaction to adult readers who may be reading it aloud to children, as they’ll understand the more complex themes in it that younger children may not. Though I think children 10 and older would grasp the deeper meanings in this book, and YA readers certainly will. The story follows 16 people (a mixture of children, teenagers, and adults) as they listen to the reading of Sam Westing’s will and discover that one of them is a murderer. All 16 are then thrown into the Westing Game where each must solve clues pertaining to the identity of the murderer. At times, these clues are almost set out like an instruction manual for a game, so we, as the readers, are also playing along. It’s this interactive quality that I’m finding so addictive. It took me a little while to get into this book, mainly because there are just so many main characters, and we're not told a whole lot about these to start with. But we're thrown right into the mystery, and it's like we're trying to solve the mystery at the same time as learn about the characters--which does work really well as we're trying to work out who the murderer is. And working out who the murderer is was just something I couldn't do--which rarely happens. But I really had no idea. And for that, I loved this book. It's just so powerful and it was refreshing to read such a complex and wonderfully plotted mystery that kept me on my toes as a reader. I was really making sure to read every single word on each page in case I missed a clue. Also, the narrative devices in this book are great. We've got multimedia in this as we get recounts of Sam Westing's will and other documents. And all of these are clues for the mystery too! The ending of the book was...strange. I don't know, it's hard to describe it without getting into spoiler territory. Because there are big twists, and though these were satisfying, I was kind of waiting for something more to happen as I was reading...but then by the time I got to the very last page, I realised that the ending was perfect as it was. If there had been another twist it probably would've detracted from the quietly powerful ending--where the true impact of it only hits you after you've stopped reading and you've got time to think. And those final pages, where time suddenly speeds up and we learn what happens to the children as they grow up and the deaths of the older characters who were adults in the story is really heartbreaking. It's really powerful writing. Turtle was by far my favourite character, swiftly followed by Angela. These two characters (sisters) really complimented each other, and I loved how many layers they each had, especially the darkness in Angela as (spoiler) she turns out to be the bomber. I also loved Sydelle and Otis (calling Otis the '65 year old delivery boy' was fantastic, by the way!). The other characters (with the exception of Grace, the mother of Angela and Turtle), although still strong with characterisation, didn't quite have the same impact on me as these characters. I think it's because there are just so many main characters in this book. It was a bit overwhelming. For a long time, I didn't even realise that Crow would be a significant character either. So that threw me a little. Disability representation is also amazing, with the character of Chris who's a wheelchair user--and I loved how this book has other characters making assumptions about Chris and being stereotypical, but that these characters are then either called out, or the narrative voice becomes really snarky as it tackles the misconception. This is honestly one of the best books I've read for disability representation. (And equally, it's not just disability that the book calls out about this; there's also a lot on feminism and the role of women, with characters fighting stereotypes and 'traditional' views.) The writing style of THE WESTING GAME is fun and snarky, and I can see why it would appeal a lot to children and teenagers. It's just so plucky and fun to read, and the narrative voice of the book is really great. There is a lot of head-hopping in the stream-of-consciousness style as we're bounced from one character to another, but uniting all these characters is this snarky voice--which is both snarky and judgmental on the current POV character and about others in general. And because the head-hopping is constant, and the whole thing is written in this style, very similar to Woolf's, this is one of the rare instances where I do feel that the head-hopping works. This is a masterful piece of writing. Highly recommended.

Good story

Good interesting book

I have to reread this novel one day, because right now I feel like it is not awesome. Yes, it is quite intriguing, but I think it could be better, maybe written in a slighty different way. Overall, I didn't get it completely. Surely, I recommend it, but it isn't one of my favourite-favourite; for example, I did not love it like I love Holes by Louis Sachar.

An adorably quirky mystery. Great read for bookish teens or anyone really.