Two related stories from history alternate in this lively account centered on the painting Mona Lisa. The primary narrative documents the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and the subsequent investigation, which failed to find the culprits or the work of art. It was this theft and the media and public response that transformed the Mona Lisa into what is now a ubiquitous element of our cultural consciousness. Interstitial chapters focus on Leonardo Da Vinci, highlighting his brilliant and curious mind, his talent as an artist, his many interests, and how unlikely it was that he came to paint a portrait of a woman named Lisa Gherardini in the early 16th century. The author’s style is friendly, funny, and forthright, directly acknowledging readers and offering occasional but matter-of-fact call-outs of sexism and racism when relevant to the story (such as the very limited options for Lisa Gherardini as a woman in 16th-century Florence), and also revealing how quickly rumors and false narratives become accepted as fact—a truth from history that’s also highly relevant today. Occasional illustrations are likely to appeal to skilled younger readers who may be engaged by the narrative but intimidated by its length in a book that also has rich potential for classroom use. (Age 10 and older)

A “witty thriller” (The New York Times) for middle-grade readers about how the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, how the robbery made the portrait the most famous artwork in the world—and how the painting by Leonardo da Vinci should never have existed at all.

SIBERT MEDAL WINNER • BOSTON GLOBE—HORN BOOK AWARD WINNER • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, NPR, The New York Public Library, The Chicago Public Library, The 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, c’est partie! The Mona Lisa, she’s 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 thieves—and detectives—of the era. And then slip back further in time and follow Leonardo da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa, through his dazzling, wondrously weird life. Discover the secret at the heart of the Mona Lisa—the 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.