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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780060541439
ISBN number: 0060541431
Label: HarperTeen
Manufacturer: HarperTeen
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: October 01, 2006
Publishing house: HarperTeen
Age index: Young Adult
Release Date: September 26, 2006
Sale Popularity Level: 34554
Studio: HarperTeen
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Product Description:
Inside little blue envelope 1 are $1,000 and instructions to buy a plane ticket.
In envelope 2 are directions to a specific London flat.
The note in envelope 3 tells Ginny: Find a starving artist.
Because of envelope 4, Ginny and a playwright/thief/ bloke–about–town called Keith go to Scotland together, with somewhat disastrous–though utterly romantic–results. But will she ever see him again?
Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it's all because of the 13 little blue envelopes.
Ages 12+
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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13 Little Blue Envelopes stood out to me on the large book shelf of the bookstore mostly because it was about a girl traveling in Europe alone. As I formerly resided there and have a fascination with the continent, I thought this book right up my alley. Certainly the book doesn't fail entirely, but it is a very shabby waste of money.
Virginia "Ginny" Blackstone is a regular teen with no apparent ambitions. That it, until her Aunt Peg sends her a package of 13 blue envelopes. Ginny just found out her beloved artist aunt had died and was just recovering when she gets the letters. So what do these pieces of paper mean? Basically Aunt Peg, a free-spirit, went on a sorjun to Europe in her younger days and wants Ginny to take one too. So before she died she laid out this whole plan for Ginny. First Ginny heads to London, where she meets the kind and collected Richard and the starving artist/thief Keith. Then Ginny really starts to move around, going to different countries and cultures. Along with the new people, she finds something out about herself along the way.
This book had a lot of potential, but fell flat. For one, there was not nearly enough detail. It all went by too fast. The author gives the traveling excuse but even on the "slow, slow boat ride to Greece" the story doesn't even make sense. There was no hook at the beginning, and the characters all came and went to fast. There was no sparkling dialogue, and nothing very exciting. Plus the whole romance with Keith was also not plausible under the circumstance that they knew eachother for like 3 seconds. And why would Ginny's mother let her go alone to Europe if she was such a control freak? This book would have been much better if written from the 1st person perspective. Some people may like this type of book, but it was a waste of time. More like a placeholder between deserving books. The only reason I really hung on was because of the Europe setting. Other than that, there isn't much here.
Rated by buyers 
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It was a good story, but it had some problems. First of all, none of the characters were really likeable.
On top of all that, I found Maureen's writing to be pretty bland. I mean, Ginny is on this crazy adventure around Europe, but the whole thing lacked any excitement. She could have been describing her math homework, for all the enthusiasm the girl had.
It wasn't terrible though, and if nothing else it made me really want to go back to Europe and just bum around for a few months, just to remind myself that it is actually a pretty exciting thing to do.
Rated by buyers -
Great plot, but, the author didn't know how to make a good "adventure" ou of it. It could've been a "i can't put this down" kind of book, but instead it was more like a "let me just finish this to get it over with".
SPOILER : I hated how she loses the last letter or whatever. I was like ? what the hell? this is the whole reason why you're doing this! She should've been more careful with them. Even though everything works out in the end..
I don't like how her romance with the kid she met kinda fades away by the end of the novel..
Not terrible, but not great.
Rated by buyers -
My friend did a book project on this and the idea of the story fascinated me. Overall it was a good not great book. It was wordy in all the wrong places and any problem Ginny faced didnt seem real or likely. The author had a tendency to gloss over the details.Sometimes the entire thing seemed unrealistic. So many things could have gone wrong with an unsupervised minor trekking acorss Europe but none of those issues were addressed. At the end of the book I felt muddled and tired just like Ginny. Considering the kinds of book I have read in this genre it was an excellent book and i recomend it but I think there are better, more detailed books out there.
Rated by buyers 
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Summary:
Ginny's Aunt Peg ran away and then died of a brain tumor. One day Ginny recieves a letter from her, the very first of the 13 little blue envelopes. Shes told to go to New York City, to 4th Noodle. A Chinese resturant under Peg's old apartment, there something would be waiting for Ginny. But also buy a plane ticket to London. And a few rules: she can only take what will fit into her backpack. She can't take guidebooks, phrase books, any foreign language aid or journals. She can't take extra money and she can't take electronics, she can only write letters and postcards to people back home. So Ginny sets off the 4th Noodle where she gets the rest of the envelopes, that she most open one by one, after the task in the one before is finished.
Why I LOVED this book:
It's funny, alot of books are just mysteriouis or adventurous and no funny. This book mixes it all! It's an adventure, sort of a mystery and funny.
I learned about other countries and foreign places
Maureen Johnsonn doesn't sit and write every little thing out. After Ginny reads an envelope she doesn't say she went to the train station and boarded a train to a certain place. Nope after she reads an envelope she's in that certain place.
I think it's more of a girly book
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