The Mona Lisa Vanishes

Awitty thriller (The New York Times) for middle-grade readersabout how theMona Lisawas stolen from the Louvre, how the robbery made the portrait the most famous artwork in the worldand 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 BYPublishers WeeklySchool Library JournalBooklistKirkus Reviews NPR The New York Public Library The Chicago Public LibraryThe 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, cest partie!TheMona Lisa,shes 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 thievesand detectivesof the era. And then slip back further in time and follow Leonardo da Vinci, painter of theMona Lisa,through his dazzling, wondrously weird life. Discover the secret at the heart of theMona Lisathe 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.

PRODUCT DETAILS:

DIMENSIONS : 6.36 x 1.08 x 9.34 inches
WEIGHT : 567 g

PRODUCT CATEGORY :

Childrens, Teenage & Educational