The Westing Game.

RASKIN, Ellen.

Item Number: 106253

New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc, 1978.

First edition of Raskins’s Newbery Award winning novel. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, lengthily inscribed by the author on the half-title page with a  drawing of a self-caricature, “O, glory, glory, glory be, will wonders never case! For Sue Glazer – my best rooter and good, good friend. Thank you, thank you, love and kisses, Ellen Raskin.” Raskin has added a full-page caricature of herself donning a gown, tiara and “Miss Newbery” sash holding a large scepter with the gold Newbery seal as the globe. She has also added a footnote at the bottom of the page which reads, “Note: This book is one of the first off the press – the dedication may be belated, but it is a good one. E.R.” The recipient, Dr. Susan Mandel Glazer was the author’s closest friend and an internationally recognized literary advocate and taught at Rider University for an impressive 45 years. Scarcely seen inscribed, let alone with a self-caricature and such an intimate association.

In Raskin's Newbery Award-winning mystery The Westing Game, wealthy industrialist Sam Westing dies and, in his will, calls for his sixteen heirs to meet at his mansion where he sets out a game in which they are paired out with a set of clues and $10,000 with which they are challenged to determine who killed Westing and why. The book went on to win the Newbery Medal, the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award and was an ALA Notable Book. It was ranked number nine among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal in 2012. It has been adapted as the 1997 feature film Get a Clue.