the mysterious disappearance of leon i mean noel

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. 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). 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. (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. 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.

And this book, which I remember adoring at the age of eight or so, is no exception. 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. Fortunately, somewhat to my surprise, I've had a pretty good success rate.

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. This is always an iffy proposition, of course. 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.

The mysterious disappearance of leon i mean noel