13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

This book was recommended to me by a number of students over the past couple of years, and I gave it a rating of four out of five. Ginny's aunt dies and leaves her thirteen little blue envelopes. Each envelope contains a message describing a task that the aunt would like Ginny to complete. The tasks take Ginny from the United States to places like England, Denmark, Italy, and Greece. The tasks require her to do things such as giving money to an unknown artist, viewing paintings, sailing on a boat in the Mediterranean Sea, and asking a stranger in Italy on a date. Ginny learns about her aunt, and herself, as she randomly travels throughout Europe.

The students told me that this book caters to a female audience, and they're probably correct. I enjoyed the randomness of the tasks, because that matched the personality of Ginny's aunt. She was an impulsive artist. The random tasks also added to the adventure, because Ginny and I never knew what to expect. Some of the tasks told Ginny to do specific things, but other tasks told her to go to a location without really explaining why. The book lacked a little bit of something for me, I'm quite sure what, but I can still recommend it to others.

Lexile level from lexile.com 770