The Puzzling World of Winston Breen

The Puzzling World of Winston Breen

                 The Puzzling World of Wnston Breen, copyright in 2007, is a non-fiction book about a treasure hunt. Written by author Eric Berlin, this story starts with Winston, a puzzle maniac, and Katie, a newly ten year old waiting for Winston's annual birthday tricks (Winston always had a puzzle to help Katie find her present, but they were done with that this year, it always ended in an argument.). When Katie sees that her only gift by her own brother was a simple box, she's immediately in suspicion. Winston denies it being a trick, but right then, four wooden strips with letters on them are disputed on the floor. Winston tries to rearrange these pieces to find the answer, but after lots of work, discovers the puzzle can only be solved with three more sets of wooden strips, which lead to a very expensive treasure. Winston now has to decide whether to work with convicts to solve the puzzle, or forget it and forget the thousands of dollars too. The theme of this book is about people of all different characters working together to solve one big mystery or puzzle.

                The story is told in the past, and is in third person. This is mainly about a group of people solving a mystery together. This is targeted for middle schoolers from grade 5-8. The genre is mystery, and it definitely stays the same throughout the whole book. Winston loves puzzles, so he solves them during random chapters, they even gave me answers in the back of the book if I got completely stumped. And, the whole mystery is one giant puzzle.The author always had something for me to think about during the book, and that was just one reason how I was interested the whole time. I like that the author wrote in third person because then I was able to view things from all the characters. They had a main character, but it still focused on everyone and their actions, not just Winston.

               This book effected me by teaching me lessons about working together. I realized, in one part, that no matter how angry you are at someone, there is always time to fix it. In the story, the librarian had three other siblings that were so greedy and hated each other. Eventually, they all died except her, and she was so angry that all she had wanted was pride, and not forgiveness. This made me think of a lot of different books with sibling rivalry as one of their themes. I can also relate to this in real life too. I don't have a sibling, but I know about my friends and how they can argue, they will still be friends for a really long time.

                The author had descriptive parts of the book, and great word choice. This book was written overall very well, and I understood it as if I was there. I liked that there were lots of quotes, because it seems like someone is talking, and I can imagine them very well. I recommend this book to anyone who likes puzzles, and anyone who likes a fairly easy non-fiction book.

Zoe Jaye

11/5/13

RATING: **** 4/5