Vendor
	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English
Weblink
http://www.alexandervance.com/

BEHIND THE CANVAS

Alexander Vance

Behind the Canvas is The Chronicles of Narnia meets Newbery Award-winner From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

There is a world behind the canvas. Past the flat facade and crackling paint is a realm where art lives, breathes, creates, and destroys. It is stitched together from every painting ever created by an artist's hands and includes the madness of van Gogh, the genius of da Vinci, and the puzzles of Picasso. It is a place rich with beauty and inspiration...and where the darkest and most dangerous creations of the human mind roam free. Claudia Miravista loves art but only sees what is on the surfaceuntil the Dutch boy Pim appears in her painting. Pim has been trapped in the world behind the canvas for centuries by a power-hungry witch and now believes that Claudia is his only hope for escape. Fueled by the help of an ancient artist and some microwaveable magic, Claudia enters the wondrous and terrifying world, intent on destroying the witch's most cherished possession and setting her new friend free. But in that world nothing is quite as it appears on the surface. Not even friendship. With a background in film editing, ALEXANDER VANCE has a natural feel for quick dialogue and tight scenes. His short stories have been published in The New Era, a magazine for youth. His first novel, The Heartbreak Messenger (Feiwel & Friends, July 2013), was widely acclaimed and was picked up by the Scholastic Book Club.

Available products
Book Published by Feiwel & Friends

Comments

Aiming to do for art history what Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series has done for Greek mythology, Vance's novel follows its 12- year-old protagonist, a budding artist named Claudia Miravista, into a world where famous artists and art iconography come to life as dynamic, idiosyncratic characters...Helped along by tongue-in-cheek footnotes from a fictional art encyclopedia, adventurous readers will end up learning a great deal about art history along the way...A conventional misfit-turned-hero tale elevated by an inspired concept.

Readers will find themselves searching out art-history textbooks or the Internet for visuals to accompany the descriptions of art and art movements. Numerous footnotes from a fictional Dr. Burkhardt's art-history book are both informative and funny. Plenty of vivid, painterly action scenes carry the day.

This well-paced mystery offers a pleasing protagonist and a very unusual setting. Vance cleverly injects the story with a bevy of secondary characters, many of whom readers will recognize from European paintings and popular art, and humorous footnotes from a fictional art-history textbook balance the tension. Themes of trust and loyalty figure prominently in this story, which explores what it means to be a true friend.