The Mona Lisa Vanishes by Nicholas Day

 The Mona Lisa is perhaps the most famous painting in the world, but back in 1910, it was just one of many great artworks in the Louvre Museum in Paris. What catapulted it to world wide fame? It was stolen. This is a children's nonfiction book about the 1911 heist of the Mona Lisa and how it affected the popularity of DaVinci's masterpiece.  It also gives a decent summary of DaVinci's life, and the place of the Mona Lisa in his career. The books ends with the surprising capture of the Mona Lisa thief, and the consequences that befell him. 

When I checked this out I thought it was a children's mystery fiction, but it turned out to be a really well written and entertaining nonfiction.  The tone of the narrative is snappy and informal. Day includes a lot of interesting facts about Paris, the Louvre, and the state of the world in the early 20th Century. He also talks about DaVinci in a not-too-flattering way, that is also engaging and amusing. The reader should beware that Day includes a lot of subjective social commentary in his narrative. This would be a great book for teachers of homeschoolers who want to mix literature with other subjects, like humanities or history, and also have a lot of interesting social questions to discuss. I am not surprised it won the Siebert Medal for children's nonfiction when it came out. (2023, 288 p)