The Mona Lisa Vanishes
A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A “witty thriller” (The New York Times) for middle-grade readers about how the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, how the robbery made the portrait the most famous artwork in the world—and how the painting by Leonardo da Vinci should never have existed at all.
SIBERT MEDAL WINNER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Publishers Weekly • School Library Journal • Booklist • Kirkus Reviews • NPR • The New York Public Library • The Chicago Public Library • The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c’est partie! The Mona Lisa, she’s gone!
No one knew who was behind the heist. Was it an international gang of thieves? Was it an art-hungry American millionaire? Was it the young Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was about to remake the very art of painting?
Travel back to an extraordinary period of revolutionary change: turn-of-the-century Paris. Walk its backstreets. Meet the infamous thieves—and detectives—of the era. And then slip back further in time and follow Leonardo da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa, through his dazzling, wondrously weird life. Discover the secret at the heart of the Mona Lisa—the most famous painting in the world should never have existed at all.
Here is a middle-grade nonfiction, with black-and-white illustrations by Brett Helquist throughout, written at the pace of a thriller, shot through with stories of crime and celebrity, genius and beauty.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Via tightly wrought, immersive snapshots of Renaissance Italy and early 20th-century France, Day (Baby Meets World, for adults) traces the gripping story of "how a strange, small portrait became the most famous painting in history." On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, an "impossible" act that—thanks to an era-specific uptick in literacy and technology, including newspaper reportage—created a massive media spectacle, first in Paris, and then internationally. Flashing backward to the life of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), the story next traces the painting's unlikely and humble beginnings in 1503 Florence; to this day, "Why this woman?" remains a great mystery. Moving back and forth in space and time to depict the personalities and historical periods involved, immediate-feeling chapters offer a multidimensional play-by-play of the heist and its broader facets, including conspiracy theories and the dawn of forensic science in the Paris of Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. Stylized b&w portraiture by Helquist (Strangeville School Is Totally Normal) portrays the largely white-cued cast, contributing playful period visuals to this captivating work of narrative nonfiction; altogether, it's a wildly entertaining, thoroughly contextualized look at art, history, and fame. Ages 10–up. Author's agent: Brenda Bowen, Book Group. Illustrator's agent: Steven Malk, Writers House.
