{"product_id":"the-mona-lisa-vanishes-isbn-9780593904213","title":"The Mona Lisa Vanishes","description":"\u003cb\u003e“The tale of a stunning art heist with a contagious love of stranger-than-fiction true stories!”—Steve Sheinkin, Newbery Honor–winning author of \u003ci\u003eBomb\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe true story of how Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece became the most famous painting in the world after being stolen from the Louvre, written as a “witty thriller” (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e) and featuring black-and-white illustrations throughout.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSIBERT MEDAL WINNER • BOSTON GLOBE—HORN BOOK AWARD WINNER • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSchool Library Journal\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBooklist, Kirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e, NPR, The New York Public Library, The Chicago Public Library, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn 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, \u003ci\u003eLa Joconde, c’est partie\u003c\/i\u003e! The \u003ci\u003eMona Lisa,\u003c\/i\u003e she’s gone!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo 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?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTravel 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 \u003ci\u003eMona Lisa,\u003c\/i\u003e through his dazzling, wondrously weird life. Discover the secret at the heart of the \u003ci\u003eMona Lisa\u003c\/i\u003e—the most famous painting in the world should never have existed at all.“[A] \u003cb\u003ewitty\u003c\/b\u003e thriller.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of the best books of 2023, \u003cb\u003ebar none\u003c\/b\u003e.” —Betsy Bird, \u003ci\u003eSchool Library Journal Fuse #8 blog\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The tale of a \u003cb\u003estunning\u003c\/b\u003e art heist told with a contagious love of stranger-than-fiction true stories!” —Steve Sheinkin, Newbery Honor–winning author of \u003ci\u003eBomb\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A thrilling, often hilarious,\u003cb\u003e page-turning read\u003c\/b\u003e.  Kids will devour it. I know I did.” —Candace Fleming, Sibert Honor–winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Family Romanov\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e★ \"A multistranded yarn \u003cb\u003eskillfully laid out\u003c\/b\u003e in broad, light brush strokes with some cogent themes mixed in.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews,\u003c\/i\u003e starred review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e★ \"A completely \u003cb\u003eengaging\u003c\/b\u003e book.\" —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e★ \"A \u003cb\u003ewildly entertaining\u003c\/b\u003e, thoroughly contextualized look at art, history, and fame.\" —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Helquist's cartoonlike black-and-white illustrations do an \u003cb\u003eexcellent\u003c\/b\u003e job of matching the narrative voice and bringing the book's dramatic moments to life.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Horn Book\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"The \u003cb\u003eplayful prose in direct address charmingly invites readers\u003c\/b\u003e into a story that details everything from the stuffy gender roles of fifteenth-century Florence to a wildly inept police investigation to a rather deceitful and not at all admirable Pablo Picasso.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Bulletin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An \u003cb\u003eintriguing exploration\u003c\/b\u003e of a significant yet little-known event.\" —\u003ci\u003eSchool Library Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eNICHOLAS DAY\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eBaby Meets World,\u003c\/i\u003e a work of narrative nonfiction for adults about the science and history of infancy, which Mary Roach called “a perfect book.” He has written regularly for \u003ci\u003eSlate; \u003c\/i\u003ehis work has also appeared in the \u003ci\u003eAtlantic\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times, \u003c\/i\u003eand the \u003ci\u003eWashington Post, \u003c\/i\u003eamong other publications. He lives in Western Massachusetts with his family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBRETT HELQUIST\u003c\/b\u003e is the illustrator of classics such as A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, The House of Bunnicula by James Howe, and books by Blue Balliet, including the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling \u003ci\u003eChasing Vermeer\u003c\/i\u003e.The Creation of the Mona Lisa\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Imagine a palazzo--a magnificent Renaissance building.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It’s Florence, 1503. There are a lot of palazzos around. Choose a good one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Now imagine a man: handsome, charming, gentle. Make him a painter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Imagine a woman: intriguing, unknown, beautiful. Make her a model.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Do you see them?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Neither of them should be there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The man shouldn’t be a painter at all. Born into a long line of notaries--an early version of a lawyer--the man should have gone into the family business. Being a notary may have been the most boring profession in Renaissance Italy, but it was steady.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Instead, he designed flying machines. He dissected dead bodies. He inflated pig bladders and launched them around the room. He was an extraordinary, ingenious, wondrously weird man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He was Leonardo da Vinci. He painted a little too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But he didn’t have a reason to paint this portrait of an ordinary Florentine woman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The woman shouldn’t be posing for him. She shouldn’t be in a room with any man. She should be hidden away in a convent, the home of a Catholic religious order.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her family hadn’t had enough money for a dowry, the sum any girl in Florence needed for a marriage, and girls without dowries disappeared into convents, cut off from the world. But a marriage was arranged, somehow, and she prospered. There were children, and there was money--enough money to commission a painting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Thanks to that painting, she became the most recognizable face in the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We don’t know how long she sat for Leonardo. We don’t know if they ever saw each other again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We do know that afterward, the woman staring out of the painting--Lisa Gherardini--will watch as the city around her is invaded and pillaged. It will be brutal. Upon her husband’s death, she will finally enter a convent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We know that the man staring into the painting--Leonardo da Vinci--will flee Florence. He’ll move up and down Italy, a brilliant artist without a place to call his own. As an old man, he will end up in another country altogether. When he makes the journey over the Alps to France, he will strap this portrait, the Mona Lisa, to a donkey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He will die.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But what happens in that palazzo will make her ageless. She will live through the centuries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She will become immortal. She cannot die.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She can, however, be kidnapped.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Theft of the Mona Lisa\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was Monday, August 21, 1911, and it was morning, finally. From his hiding place inside the closet, the man could hear the footsteps of the Louvre guards.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the empty, enormous rooms of the Louvre, the footsteps must have echoed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They came closer, and closer still, and then--farther. Each time, the guards walked right past him. He had no idea if they were looking for him. But they should have been. On Sunday, the man had come to the Louvre just like any other visitor, but when the museum was closing, he didn’t do what the other visitors did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He didn’t leave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Louvre wasn’t a hotel. You weren’t supposed to spend the night. But a few months before, a French journalist had done the same thing. The journalist didn’t think the Louvre’s security was any good, and to prove it, when the museum closed, he crawled inside the sarcophagus of an Egyptian king and stayed there until the morning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He was right about the security. No one bothered him. Not even the Egyptian king whose sarcophagus he’d borrowed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e All the journalist took from the Louvre was material for an article, an expose on the museum’s lousy security.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This man wanted to take more than that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They’d both gone unnoticed because the Louvre wasn’t just an art museum. It was a labyrinth, with a thousand years of hiding places.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was first built as a medieval fortress, complete with a moat. It became a palace, the magnificent home of French royalty. With every monarch, the palace grew yet more palatial, sprouting vast wings and pavilions like some sort of fantastical beast. After the French Revolution, which overthrew the monarchy, it completed its final transformation into a museum, a monument for the new French Republic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e By then, it sprawled. It occupied the space of nearly forty football fields. It was as long as the Eiffel Tower if the Eiffel Tower were laid down on the ground and lined up end to end with another Eiffel Tower. It was a seemingly endless expanse of grand rooms, like a mirror reflected in a mirror.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Alongside those rooms were centuries of nooks and crannies. These were less grand: storerooms, cupboards, annexes, cubbyholes. A human being could squeeze in almost anywhere. A century ago, no one at the Louvre even knew how many of these hideaways there were. There were too many to count.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And on Monday, August 21, 1911, no one at the Louvre knew that someone was hidden away inside one of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This man had rejected the sarcophagus in favor of a storage closet. The Louvre was also a sort of art studio, where amateurs came to copy the paintings of the greats. The museum let these copyists--that was the term for them--store their things there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When the Louvre closed on Sunday, the man slipped in among the easels and paint boxes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That was the easy part. What came next was harder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The man waited behind the closet door. He listened to the footsteps.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Let us leave him there for a minute.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He’s completely still, but outside the museum, a new century is accelerating. Everything is in motion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The changes have been blindingly fast. New inventions like automobiles and airplanes are a blur on the street and in the sky. Their speed is altering fundamental facts of life--things as basic as time and space. People can move across the globe at unimagined velocity, connecting places that were once isolated. Information follows at the same breathtaking pace. All of this is shrinking the world. A local story--the story of a criminal at loose in the Louvre, for example--can now become a global sensation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e All of this will shape what happens when the closet door opens.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It will be a story at the mercy of this new breakneck century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The halls of the Louvre went quiet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A closet door cracked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When the man stepped out of the storage closet--sleepless from a night with the easels, sweaty in the August heat--he was alone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Or almost alone. He was surrounded by the most extraordinary paintings in the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The storage closet had an extremely good location--a suspiciously good location. Around the corner was the Salon Carre, the home of the most prized paintings in the Louvre. The great Italian painters were all represented: Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto. And Leonardo da Vinci.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The museum was closed on Mondays, but it wasn’t abandoned. The staff still came in: curators, cleaners, maintenance workers. There were guards too, but fewer, and they had to cover an area the size of a small city.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e None of them saw the man leave the closet. But if any had, they might not have noticed. He was wearing a white smock, the uniform of the Louvre maintenance workers. It was a suit of invisibility. He was too normal to be noticed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He didn’t look like a thief.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He walked around the corner into the Salon Carre, the heart of the Louvre. It was all his for the taking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The paintings in the Louvre were not locked down. This lack of security was actually a form of security: in case of fire, the guards were supposed to grab the paintings and run. Still, some paintings--especially valuable paintings--were hung in a way that required inside knowledge. They had to be removed from their hooks in a very precise way, a way that anyone who didn’t already know was unlikely to figure out fast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The painting the man wanted was hung that way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Luckily, he didn’t have to figure it out. He already knew. He slid it off the hooks in seconds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was all going according to plan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e On the wall, the painting was sublime. Off the wall, it was agony. Painted not on canvas but on wood, surrounded by an antique frame and glass, the whole thing weighed in at almost two hundred pounds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Somehow, the man wrestled it into the nearest stairwell. Here, he was safe--or safer. He removed the glass case and cut away the frame. The painting itself was all that was left: three slabs of wood joined together, measuring less than three feet high and two feet wide.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was over four hundred years old. And it was his.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Almost.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was a problem. A painting on canvas, once outside of its frame, can be rolled up. A painting on wood can never be rolled up. A slab of wood is always the size of the slab of wood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was no good solution. So he went with a bad solution: he put the painting--fragile, irreplaceable, unprotected--under his sweaty white smock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He started down the stairwell, and when he reached the bottom, he opened the door--or he tried to open the door. The door was locked. He put its key in the lock and opened the door--or he tried to open the door. The key didn’t work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Suddenly, it was not all going according to plan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The man removed the doorknob with a screwdriver. But removing a doorknob doesn’t open a locked door--the door is still locked--and before he could do anything else, he heard footsteps. Someone, possibly a guard--probably a guard--was coming down the stairs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He was trapped. He was cornered at the bottom of a stairwell, sweaty and sleepless, with a priceless painting poorly hidden under his smock. It wasn’t a good look.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The footsteps came closer, and closer, and then . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It wasn’t a guard. It was a plumber. The Louvre was so large it had its own plumbers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The plumber saw a man at the bottom of the stairwell. Who did he see? What did he see? Did he see the sweat? Did he see the desperation? Did he see the shape of a painting?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The man at the bottom spoke first. He didn’t make excuses. He didn’t explain what he was doing there. He acted like he belonged. Look at this door, he said to the plumber. It doesn’t even have a doorknob! How am I supposed to get out of here?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The plumber saw the white smock. He saw someone too normal to be noticed. With his pliers, the plumber twisted the inner workings of the lock. It sprang open, and the man sprang out of the trap. He walked out of the stairwell, into a courtyard, through a gallery, and toward the Louvre’s entrance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was a guard at the entrance--or there was supposed to be a guard at the entrance. But at this minute, on this Monday morning, the guard was gone. He was fetching a bucket of water.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He’d picked the worst time in the long history of the Louvre to clean his booth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The man in the white smock--sweaty, sleepless, triumphant--walked out of the Louvre and into Paris.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then he disappeared.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He’d stolen two things from the Louvre.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The first was a doorknob.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e No one would care about the doorknob.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The second was the Mona Lisa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A lot of people would care a lot about the Mona Lisa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Ludicrous Fame of the Mona Lisa\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The theft of the Mona Lisa was the greatest heist in art history. Every heist that followed--every stolen painting--was an imitation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Not an imitation of the strategy, or the craft, or the luck, but an imitation of the sheer bravado: the idea of stealing something that couldn’t possibly be stolen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A year before the theft, in a spooky coincidence, the director of the Louvre had been asked about the possibility: Could the Mona Lisa be stolen? The director had laughed. He’d said the Mona Lisa would be no easier to steal than the massive towers of Notre-Dame, the medieval French cathedral.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was a question that didn’t interest many people. Before the Mona Lisa was stolen, most people had never heard of it. Outside of select circles--artists, art lovers, people lost in the Louvre--the painting hardly existed. It was just another work by Leonardo da Vinci. A strange, small, dark portrait.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After it was stolen, it became a sensation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For the Mona Lisa, being stolen was a very good career move.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Today, the painting is so famous that stealing it sounds like a joke. It sounds like stealing the Washington Monument or Niagara Falls; it sounds absurd. The Mona Lisa is so popular today it can hardly be seen: a visitor to the Louvre is lucky to get close enough to catch a glimpse, to confirm that it exists. But that’s enough, because every visitor to the Louvre already knows what the Mona Lisa is supposed to look like.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The reason they know is because of what happened on August 21, 1911.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Before that date, it was possible to see the Mona Lisa without already knowing what the Mona Lisa looks like.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Afterward, it was not.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This is a story about how a strange, small portrait became the most famous painting in history. It’s about a shocking theft and a bizarre recovery. It’s a glimpse of a new age--a future of conspiracy theories and instant celebrity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But it is also the story of another way of looking at the world--clearly, plainly, without assumptions or expectations. It’s the story of how Leonardo da Vinci looked at the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To solve the theft of Leonardo’s painting, the world needed someone like Leonardo da Vinci himself: someone who observes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The world would not get Leonardo.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Like the Mona Lisa that August in Paris, Leonardo was long gone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e She’s Gone\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In Which No One Notices That the Mona Lisa Is Missing, and Then Everyone Everywhere Notices\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Monday Morning\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e For a moment--just a moment--put the man in the white smock back in his closet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Make him sleepless and sweaty again. Make him not yet triumphant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Bring back the footsteps.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The footsteps were from a crew of workmen--the men who were supposed to be in white smocks. They walked toward the Salon Carre, where the head of the crew--the head of all maintenance at the Louvre--stopped his men. “This,” he said, pointing to the Mona Lisa, “is the most valuable painting in the world.” He used the French name for the painting: La Joconde.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The crew looked at the Mona Lisa. They had no idea that they were the last people who would see it in the Louvre for a very long time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After they left, the man came out of the closet. He went into the Salon Carre; he went out of the Salon Carre; he went down a stairwell.","brand":"Random House Studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233714778341,"sku":"NP9780593904213","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593904213.jpg?v=1767740547","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-mona-lisa-vanishes-isbn-9780593904213","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}