Status
Checked out
Due Jan 19, 2024
Collection
Publication
Greenwillow Books (2022), Edition: Reprint, 304 pages
Description
Using a mysterious wardrobe that allows them to travel through time, two eleven-year-olds, Federico a boy from the Italian Renaissance and Bee a girl from present-day New Jersey, work together to prevent the bickering between two great artists from changing the future.
Local notes
Booklist Starred Reviews, 04/14/2021
Grades 3-6 - "*Starred Review* After receiving a Newbery Honor for The Book of Boy (2018), Murdock returns to the historical fiction genre, this time mixing things up with time travel (thanks to a clever wardrobe built by Leonardo da Vinci) and an art mystery. Murdock keeps her story fresh with tight, fast-paced writing that incorporates history by bringing it engagingly to life and tying it meaningfully to the present. The piece of history in question? Rome, 1511, when 11-year-old Federico (a duke’s son) is being held as a political hostage by the pope. Despite being a prisoner, Federico is relatively free to wander the papal palace, including the Sistine Chapel, where the curmudgeonly and supremely unhygienic Michelangelo is painting his famous ceiling, and the study, where Raphael created Federico’s own portrait. It is, nonetheless, a lonely existence and why haughty yet likable Federico is happy to find a discarded wardrobe that produces, first, a tawny cat; second, Herbert Bother, an art buyer from New Jersey, 1928; and third, Bee, an 11-year-old girl from present-day Brooklyn, who has stumbled upon an impossible Raphael sketch of herself. Murdock gives readers plenty to puzzle over as Bee and Federico work to fulfill promises and reshape events for the better. Spot art from Zelinsky will appear in the final edition of this inspired foray into the Renaissance and beyond."
Grades 3-6 - "*Starred Review* After receiving a Newbery Honor for The Book of Boy (2018), Murdock returns to the historical fiction genre, this time mixing things up with time travel (thanks to a clever wardrobe built by Leonardo da Vinci) and an art mystery. Murdock keeps her story fresh with tight, fast-paced writing that incorporates history by bringing it engagingly to life and tying it meaningfully to the present. The piece of history in question? Rome, 1511, when 11-year-old Federico (a duke’s son) is being held as a political hostage by the pope. Despite being a prisoner, Federico is relatively free to wander the papal palace, including the Sistine Chapel, where the curmudgeonly and supremely unhygienic Michelangelo is painting his famous ceiling, and the study, where Raphael created Federico’s own portrait. It is, nonetheless, a lonely existence and why haughty yet likable Federico is happy to find a discarded wardrobe that produces, first, a tawny cat; second, Herbert Bother, an art buyer from New Jersey, 1928; and third, Bee, an 11-year-old girl from present-day Brooklyn, who has stumbled upon an impossible Raphael sketch of herself. Murdock gives readers plenty to puzzle over as Bee and Federico work to fulfill promises and reshape events for the better. Spot art from Zelinsky will appear in the final edition of this inspired foray into the Renaissance and beyond."
Awards
Nevada Young Readers' Award (Nominee — 2024)
CCBC Choices (2022)