Common Sense Note
The picture-book format and outstanding illustrations make it highly appealing for children. The text is friendly and loaded with interesting details about the subject.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Mary LeCompte
Diane Stanley's Leonardo da Vinci is every parent's answer to the problem of dry, boring biographies. For school research assignments, or just for fun, kids will want to read this book--cover to cover--and then read it again.
What sets this book apart from other biographies is the author's ability to bring her well-researched text to life with finely detailed illustrations that blend the famous artist's work with her own.
Stanley's art is a stunning combination of watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, and photo collage of Leonardo's greatest works; it's the kind of illustration that is so detailed, so rich, that it almost tells the story all by itself. The text is dotted with da Vinci's original sketchings, and the knotted page-border design is an adaptation of one of his ideas.
The text is packed with little-known facts, such as how da Vinci's twenty-four-foot clay sculpture of a horse was never cast in bronze as intended, and was eventually used for target practice by the French when they captured Milan in 1499.
Readers also learn how he frequently abandoned paintings and how he protected his notes by writing in backward script. Kids will hurry to the nearest mirror to read the backward text on the back cover.
From The Book
The world saw Leonardo as courtly and charming. But at heart he was a solitary man. "If you are alone," he once wrote, "you belong entirely to yourself ... . If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself, or even less."
Plot Summary:
Leonardo da Vinci is more than just the life story of one of the world's greatest artists and thinkers. It's a blend of European history and art history, beautifully realized with detailed illustrations and original reproductions. It's also filled with fascinating facts and some surprises--hold the back cover up to a mirror to reveal one of Leonardo's trade secrets!
Related Books:
Leonardo da Vinci is part of a series by Diane Stanley and, sometimes, her husband and collaborator Peter Vennema that includes such award-winning titles as Cleopatra, Charles Dickens, and Shaka: King of the Zulus. The author also wrote Michelangelo.
Another excellent look at da Vinci is Janice Herbert's Leonardo da Vinci for Kids.
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