Wednesday, July 08, 2009

What Mrs N's Been Reading - Leonardo's Shadow


I finished Leonardo's Shadow by Christopher Grey sometime last week, but I'm just now getting around to the post. It's written from the point of view of 15-year-old Giacomo in Milan, Italy in 1497. If you aren't an art history buff, that may not mean anything to you. But if you are, you'd know that that is when and where Leonardo da Vinci was working on The Last Supper. Several years earlier Leonardo had rescued Giacomo from an angry mob, took him into his house, and made him his servant. Giacomo had fallen, and has no memory of anything before the angry mob. He is trying to find out who he is and where he came from. He also wants to become an artist himself, but Leonardo refuses to teach him, so he surreptitiously works on his own, copying some of the master's sketches. I really enjoyed this one. You get a look at life and the politics of the time, as well as how da Vinci worked, or frequently didn't work. A very good one for middle school students.
Enjoy!

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