![]() Once you’re old enough to read chapter books, much less mystery books with complicated word puzzles embedded within, you’re certainly old enough to understand that the facts of daily life were different in the past. I wondered for a moment how much this would mystify the children of today, but I dismissed the thought as patronizing. In the Facebook era, it’s almost easier to find acquaintances than it is to lose them. Much of the story hinges on the search for a missing person, and the techniques employed in that search are, while inherently ridiculous, also very much of their time. The flip side of this is the effect the time period has on the plot. The lovely text-as-picture illustrations, which Ellen Raskin herself provided, are rendered in classic late sixties typography and line art. First published in 1971, it’s full of tongue-in-cheek period references (the grape workers strike, hippie art communes) that I blithely read past as a child. ![]() The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin is one of those. Some are a delightful surprise, as I get to revisit everything I found wonderful about them as a kid while catching some of the more grown-up jokes and references – like suddenly realizing that funny skit from Sesame Street was a send-up of Saturday Night Live. (…not that I don’t still own all the ones that came after, too. Friends, I only wear three pairs of shoes, but I still own just about every book I cared about before my 18th birthday. I’ve been re-reading a few favorite books from childhood and adolescence recently, trying to remember what made them so engaging and important to my younger self.
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