The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Reynard, Or Reynie, Muldoon is a gifted young orphan who attends school right in his own orphanage, the Stonetown Orphanage in a town called, appropriately enough, Stonetown. He is especially gifted in speaking languages, but instead of having Reynie sent to another, more expensive, school that is especially geared for gifted children, the headmaster instead brings in a tutor named Miss Perumal to teach Reynie one on one.

But when she sees a special advertisement in the paper asking for gifted children looking for "Special Opportunities", Miss Perumal thinks that Reynie would be perfect to answer the needs of the person or persons who put the ad in the paper. Since Miss Perumal's mother is in the hospital and needs a special diet, Reynie will take the test as Miss Perumal shops, and she will pick him up when the test is over and she is done shopping.

Reynie shows up on test day with exactly one pencil, as demanded, to take the test. On the way in, he meets a young woman who drops her pencil, and it rolls down and into a grate and is lost. While other kids ignore her, Reynie tries to help her, and discovers, eventually, that she has more than one pencil after all. She urges him to go in to take the test, and he finds that the questions are very strange. They ask if he likes to watch TV or listen to the Radio. They ask if he is brave, and other strange things. All of which Reynie answers truthfully. But out of all the kids in the classroom, he is the only one who passes the test. All this means, is that he must take another test in another place, right away. He gets the woman giving the test to promise to notify Miss Perumal for him, and goes to take the second test.

This one is even stranger. It has 40 questions, but he finds that by reading the last 20, he is able to answer the first 20...for the answers to them are contained within. and so he passes the second portion of the test as well. Again, he gets the woman giving the test to promise to notify Miss Perumal, but he thinks that the woman may be lying. He is taken to a room to wait to answer the third portion of the test, but he waits most of the day and only three other children join him. One is a bald boy named Sticky Washington, and the other two are a tall girl named Kate, who had run away to join the circus so many times that they eventually let her stay, and a small girl named Constance, who is so contrary and stubborn that she refuses to do anything anyone tells her.

But they are being gathered together to fend off an attack by a man named Ledroptha Curtain, who is using children, and the voices of Children, to slowly brainwash people all around the world, using all sorts of media: TV, radios... anything that uses broadcast power. Why he would be doing this, the children's benefactor, Mr. Benedict, doesn't seem to know. But he needs the children to infiltrate Nomansan Island, Mr. Curtain's stronghold in Stonetown harbor, and find out what Curtain is planning, and then, hopefully, to use their talents to make it go awry.

But can these four children succeed where grown men and woman have failed? And can they really do it while only using Morse Code through flashlights to communicate with the mainland and Mr. Benedict and the other adults who believe in him? And even if they can discover Mr, Curtain's plan, do they have any hope of stopping it, or seeing the people they love ever again?

I liked this book. Kids are rarely though of as being smart enough or gifted enough to pay attention to, and the plot of the book makes much hay out of that fact. Who would suspect four children of being determined secret agents? Now, the ages of the kids aren't given, but they seem to mostly be around 9 to 12 years old (with the possible exception of Constance, who seems much younger than the others, with her insistence on Candy or Ice Cream for meals). But each of them has their strengths.

Kate is bodily strong and fearless, while Reynie is good with languages and fairly brave, Sticky can learn and remember anything he's once read, and Constance is amazingly stubborn and contrary. But each gets the chance to use their talents at least once in the story, and often many more times than that.

Each member of the society is a strong character, and well-developed, especially Kate, although she seems the most vivid because of the skills she learned in the circus where she lives, which come in handy in a wide variety of situations. But the story is by turns scary, thrilling and chilling, and readers will enjoy how the main characters survive and turn the tables on a man who seeks to take over the world his own way..

Recommended for kids, and younger teens as well.