13 Little Blue Envelopes

by Maureen Johnson

I read this book because 1) it was on sale and 2) Maureen Johnson is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. I love her to pieces on social media, so it makes sense that I would love her books.

It turns out that's not quite the case. Not that this is a bad book, it's just not particularly good. It's a solid "meh".

The premise is that this girl (Virginia/Ginny) has just found out that her eccentric, unreliable artist aunt has just died of brain cancer while touring Europe and left Ginny with 13 blue envelopes. Each envelope contains instructions and Ginny can only open them in certain times and places. Each letter has an assignment like "Find that cafe in Paris that I lived in for a month" and "Ask out an Italian boy". Once she has completed an assignment, she can open the next envelope.

Ginny is also not allowed to take along any maps, guidebooks, or any kind of electronics (including cell phone, camera, and computer) and she is forbidden electronic communication with anyone in America. Only letters and postcards to let the family know she's still alive are permitted. She does manage to find ways around some of these rules, and at one point she flat out breaks one of them, but for the most part I am in favor of these rules.

Ginny (16-years-old) is shy and introverted and has never been away from home on her own before, so to say that this experience is new for her is an understatement. In that sense, this is largely a coming-of-age story as Ginny explores the world and meets all sorts of people and gets to know herself better. She discovers that she can do fun and exciting things without her aunt, and at the same time, she comes to terms with her aunt's death. Despite the slow death that is brain cancer, Aunt Peg was in Europe and out of contact with her family when she got sick, so her poor family never even knew she was sick until she was already gone. One minute she was fine, then she left with no explanation and no forwarding address, then they got notice that she had passed and that they should go to the airport to pick up her remains.

The letters were also kind of Aunt Peg's way of saying good-bye to Ginny. In the letters, she got to tell Ginny about her travels and let Ginny experience parts of them for herself. She also told Ginny things that she never told anyone else, and I think that probably helped her cope with what was coming.

I know that Maureen Johnson has done some traveling. I don't know how extensive, but I do know that she did an excellent job of immersing the reader into every place that Ginny went. She boiled down each city to its most basic elements and presented them to the reader. In doing so, she was able to transport the reader all over Europe with Ginny, without taking away from the story. It was really quite brilliant.