Masterpiece

The drawing of the lady and the lion featured in last week's Middle Grade Gallery is from Masterpiece by Elise Broach (Henry Holt, 2008; this is the cover of the paperback edition, SquareFish, 2010).  It's a invented work of art by a real artist, Albrecht Dürer. I chose Dürer's Stag Beetle to accompany the original post because in the book, a beetle named Marvin is indirectly called on to copy the Dürer drawing in question. It represents Fortitude, one of the four cardinal virtues; the others (Prudence, Temperance, and Justice) have all been stolen, and the museum's plan to recover them involves a forgery, a theft, and an eleven-year-old boy named James.

Masterpiece is very much in the tradition of E.L. Konigsberg's From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which might explain why I love it.  That book won the Newbery in 1967; and while Masterpiece didn't get any Newbery honors, it did win the E.B. White Read Aloud Award for Older Readers in 2009.

It's also illustrated, in pen-and-ink of course, by one of my favorites, Kelly Murphy (see the Beastologist books, among others).  This image, scanned from my hardcover copy of Masterpiece, shows James and his father looking at Dürer's drawing in a gallery at the Met.  Hanging next to it, in a more ornate frame, is Bellini's drawing of Fortitude, a real work of art on loan from the Getty.  And if you look closely, you can even see Marvin perched on James's shoulder.

Dave the Potter

I'm looking forward to Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill; illustrated by Bryan Collier (Little, Brown, 2010), and reviewed in today's Shelf Awareness (9/15/2010).  Dave was a 19th-century potter and poet from South Carolina, where he was enslaved for most of his life.  He inscribed some of his pottery with two-line poems, practical ("put every bit all between / surely this jar will hold 14," indicating that the jar would hold 14 gallons) as well as personal ("I wonder where is all my relation / friendship to all--and, every nation").  In any case, reading and writing, even signing his name (which he also did, in beautiful script, "Dave") was forbidden to slaves, making Dave the Potter's work even more powerful and rare.

Hill's text, fittingly, is also a poem about making a pot, crafted of short, strong lines; Bryan Collier's earth-toned watercolor and collage illustrations provide the larger context (the pairing is described in Brown's review as "a glorious collaboration").  The back matter is thorough and includes some of Dave's poems (I quoted my favorites from them) as well as photographs of his work.  You can even peek inside Dave the Potter using BookBrowse.

Grownups like me who want to know more about Dave should try Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of Slave Potter Dave by Leonard Todd (Norton, 2008).  Todd is a descendant of one of Dave's owners; he began his research after finding out about his family's connection to Dave in this New York Times article ("In a slave's pottery, a saga of courage and beauty," 1/30/2000).  Finally, local folk can see an alkaline-glazed stoneware jar made by Dave the Potter in 1862, on display in the Civil War collection at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.

How the Sphinx Got to the Museum, review and giveaway

Most of us only get to see Ancient Egyptian artifacts in museums far from Egypt--like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which has one of the finest collections of Egyptian art outside of Cairo.  And while there are lots of books for kids about Ancient Egypt, this book answers the question that at least one kid on every school tour is likely to ask:  How the Sphinx Got to the Museum by Jessie Hartland (Blue Apple Books, 2010).

Hartland uses the school tour to frame the story of the Sphinx of Hateshepsut's journey over 3,000 years (and 5,000 miles), from the quarry at Aswan where the granite was obtained all the way to the galleries of the Met.  The cumulative story format--think The House that Jack Built--introduces some of the people and professions involved in her journey; on the museum side, those include archaeologists, art movers, curators, conservators, even the registrar, who uses "red oil paint and a teeny, tiny brush" to paint the the official number (31.3.166) on the Sphinx.

These vignettes are fascinating (trust me, kids ask about this sort of thing all the time).  Hartland varies the repetitive parts of the text just enough to keep things interesting; the use of a variety of fonts also helps here.  The ink-and-watercolor illustrations themselves are worth the price of admission, though:  colorful, detailed but not busy, expressive and entertaining (keep an eye on the Sphinx's face throughout).  Hartland worked closely with the staff at the Met, and the book has an authentic museum feel.  N.b., the docent is wearing sensible shoes.

I have an extra copy of How the Sphinx Got to the Museum to give away!  If you'd like to be entered in a random drawing (and you do; it's a gorgeous book), please leave a comment by midnight Monday, September 13.   Bonus entry if you comment with a behind-the-scenes-at-the-museum question you'd like to see answered in picture book form.

[Review copy from Blue Apple Books via Media Masters Publicity.  Thank you!]

Middle Grade Gallery 6

This week in the Middle Grade Gallery, one of a fictional series of four miniatures, as it might have been drawn by Albrecht Dürer. The drawing is first copied, then stolen (and later, recovered) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in this middle grade novel, one of my favorites of 2009.

The drawing was a tiny framed miniature of a gowned woman kneeling, with her arms around an animal. A lion. She had waves of hair that cascaded down her back, and the lion's mane flowed in similar waves over its massive shoulders.

The drawing above obviously isn't a lion; it's Dürer's Stag Beetle, 1505 (Getty), and it's also a big hint.  Have you figured it out yet?