THE MONA LISA VANISHES

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!

This propulsive work of narrative non-fiction for middle-graders tells the twisting, turning, near-incredible story of how the Mona Lisa was stolen, how the robbery made the portrait the most famous artwork in the world - and how the painting never should have existed at all. This is middle-grade nonfiction written at the pace of a thriller, shot through with stories of crime and celebrity, genius and beauty.

The Mona Lisa Vanishes takes place in extraordinary periods of revolutionary change: Paris, 1911 and Renaissance Italy. It traces a relentless, wrongheaded investigation through the front pages and back streets of Paris, knocking at the door of the most famous artist of the modern era, and ultimately ending up in a packed courtroom in Rome. Simultaneously, it follows Leonardo da Vinci through his dazzling, weird, unlikely life. History here isn't something that had to happen - history, like life, is one improbable event after another.

This is a book about the past, but it isn't trapped there. The theft of the Mona Lisa was a glimpse of a new age - a future of conspiracy theories and instant celebrity. It's a future that looks a lot like our present. The narrative presents another way of looking at the world - clearly, plainly, without assumptions or expectations. It's the story of how Leonardo looked at the world and the story of how the Paris Police didn't.

NICHOLAS DAY is the author of Baby Meets World (St. Martin's), a work of narrative nonfiction for adults about the science and history of infancy, which Mary Roach called "a perfect book." He has written regularly for Slate; his work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other publications. This year, he is living in Berlin with his family, but he calls upstate New York home.

Brett L. Helquist is an American illustrator best known for his work in the children's books A Series of Unfortunate Events. As such, his illustrations for that series have appeared in multiple media, including the books, the audio book covers, and the calendars.