Recommended by Barb Fecteau

Caroline Fish's mother and Leon Carillon's mother co-invent Carillon's Pomato Soup, but, in order that both family's names will be on the soup, Caroline and Leon must marry when they are children. Then, Leon is sent to boarding school. When the two meet as adults, a tragic boating accident separates them, and Mrs. Carillon spends the next twenty years looking for Leon - now Noel - based on a partial understanding of his last spoken message. Over time, Mrs. Carillon adopts twins, Tina and Tony, settles in New York, and reunites with childhood friend Augie Kunkel. Tina, Tony, and Augie work together to help decode Noel's final message. They finally crack it, and there's a happy ending, but not the expected one.

The Westing Game meets The Mixed-Up Files meets Roald Dahl. ( )

One of my favorite books of all time. ( )

I can't actually be objective. Also, it's the cover I wish I had, not the one I had. You wouldn't necessarily think it would be a classic middle grade book -- weird premise, a lot of focus on the adult characters, a puzzle whose solution maybe isn't that solvable. But it's all sorts of different ways to search, and figure out what you want, and who you are vs who you are supposed to be, and she loves every character and respects her readers so much. ( )

Read this when I was about ten, just reread it. Raskin wrote books unlike anyone else's - the characters and the readers are all trying to solve a puzzle. The goal is to solve it before the characters. I did, but not by much. ( )

I have, off and on lately, been going back to books I loved as a kid and giving them a re-read from an adult's perspective. This is always an iffy proposition, of course. Not all of them will hold up well, and if you find you don't like them anymore, not only have you just read something you didn't enjoy, but you've also gone and tarnished a childhood memory. Fortunately, somewhat to my surprise, I've had a pretty good success rate. I might not enjoy these books quite as intensely as I did way back when, but plenty of them turn out to still be entertaining. And this book, which I remember adoring at the age of eight or so, is no exception.

It's the story of one Mrs. Carillon, who was married to a boy named Leon -- he later decided he'd rather be called Noel -- when they were aged five and seven, in order to secure the inheritance of a soup-factory-based family fortune. (I am sure this cannot have been legally binding, but never mind that detail.) The two did not see each other again for many years, and when a reunion was finally arranged, it was quickly ended by a boat accident. When poor Mrs. Carillon last saw the guy, he was bobbing up and down in the water, trying to tell her something she could only half-hear between all the blubs and glubs. Then, as soon as someone fished him out, he disappeared, and she spent the next twenty years searching for him (employing, it must be said, some rather dubious strategies).

Raskin really engages her readers in attempting to solve the puzzle of what happened to Leon (or Noel), teasingly hinting when she's just provided a clue, and outlining a strategy for attempting to guess the missing words of the message. I remember really throwing myself into that puzzle as a kid, and I still found the whole mystery plot unexpectedly engaging as an adult. (It probably helped that I had only very vague memories of what the solution was.) It's also just a fun story, with lots of humor ranging from the ridiculous to the sly to the utterly deadpan. Whether it'd have anywhere near the same appeal for anybody coming to it for the first time as an adult, I don't know. But I definitely recommend it for kids, and deem it well worth a revisit for those with childhood nostalgia for it. ( )