That Mona Lisa Smile

Ahhhh, Summer.

I hope you all are enjoying summer. For our southern hemisphere friends, I hope that the winter is not too brutal. 

I've had some lovely days of waking up without an alarm, a trip to a family reunion and getting some closet cleaning accomplished! On long car trips, when my dear hubby is driving, I like to read or listen a good book. I've got lots of middle grade books lined up this summer. Most of them are for next year's Battle of the Books competition with middle schoolers.

The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, A Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity, by Nicholas Day is a BoB nonfiction romp through the 1911 theft of the portrait from the Louvre. 

Random House Studio 2023

In his story-telling, Day includes all kinds of details of early policing, the state of society just before the Great War and personality traits of Da Vinci that are sure to make a middle school kid snort with laughter a time or two. Think keystone cops meet mad-genius painter meet crazy-pants no-experience art thief. The New York Times describes the books as a "witty thriller." I agree.

Even though The Mona Lisa Vanishes is a Junior Library Guild recommendation, I loved this book! A little known, forgotten detail of this historic episode is involvement by Pablo Picasso. His whole career could have been blown if he had copped an art theft rep before becoming famous as a painter.

Well, Picasso reminded me of our friend Irene's latest Artspeak collection. And what do you know?  A Mona Lisa poem from 2017 hangs in her gallery.

Mona Lisa in Love
By Irene Latham

You say my eyes
hold oceans of mystery,

that questions next in my hair,

read the full poem here

Additionally, poet Angelina Weld Grimke wrote 'A Mona Lisa' that was published in Countee Cullen's collection, Caroling Dusk, 1927. 

A Mona Lisa
By Angela Weld Grimke

                        1

I should like to creep
Through the long brown grasses
    that are your lashes;

I should like to poise
    On the very brink
Of the leaf-brown pools
    That are your shadowed eyes;
I should like to cleave
    Without sound,
Their glimmering waters,
    Their unrippled waters,
I should like to sink down
    And down,
        And down...
            And deeply drown.

                    2

Would I be more than a bubble breaking?
    Or an ever-widening circle
    Ceasing at the marge?
Would my white bones
    Be the only white bones
Wavering back and forth, back and forth
    In their depths?

This poem was found at the Poetry Society and is in the public domain.

As it turns out, this book has sent me down many rabbit holes looking for more information. I hope you find something as interesting as this funny page turner to ignite your curiosity this summer.

I'm still pondering clunker lines--no poems yet. Stay tuned.

Many thanks to Tanita Davis for hosting Poetry Friday this weekend over at Fiction, instead of lies.