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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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THE FRAME-UP

Wendy McLeod MacKnight

Every painting and portrait you've ever viewed is hiding a secret: When you're looking at them, they're looking back. It's a secret that almost-13-year-old artist, Sargent Singer discovers one summer...
There are few rules at the Beaverbrook Gallery but those rules must be obeyed:
1) Mandatory attendance at monthly meetings.
2) No speaking to the Gallery Director yourself. Any comments, questions, or complaints must go through Max.
3) Remain in your paintings during the hours of operation.
And, most importantly
4) Do not, under any circumstances, let visitors know you are alive.

Having come to all the way to the small town of Fredricton, Canada, from New York City to spend time with the father he hasn't really seen since his parents' divorce, the last thing Sargent expects is to catch the portrait of a lovely girl sticking out her tongue at some obnoxious young boys. Mona Dunn was born in 1902 and died in 1928, but her 1915 portrait by William Orpen preserves her 13-year-old self for all time. Literally. And now Mona is responsible for breaking the biggest rule at the Gallery.

So begins Sargent and Mona's relationship. Sargent spends his days at the Beaverbrook's art classes and his evenings trying to find time to talk to Mona and find out everything about living behind the frames. Mona just wants to learn about the outside world to hear about movies and the internet and everything there is to know about Sargent. The two become fast friends and help each other make sense of their constrained circumstances. When the Beaverbrook becomes a target for art theft, Mona and Sargent, along with the other art students and painted residents of the Gallery, must foil the robbers before Mona ends up hanging on a wall, all alone in some chalet in Switzerland, without the friends and family she loves. Mona and Sargent know there isn't a happy ending for them. For she is a never-changing girl behind the canvas and he's a boy who will go away and grow up. So they will just have to remember the summer where everything changed.

Wendy McLeod MacKnight is the former deputy minister of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Education in New Brunswick, Canada and is the author of It's a Mystery, Pig Face (Sky Pony Press).

(Image: Mona Dunn, the heroine of our story, by William Orpen, 1915, Oil on Canvas, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada)
Available products
Book

Published 2018-06-05 by Greenwillow Books

Book

Published 2018-06-05 by Greenwillow Books

Comments

Complex Chinese rights to Crown (pre-empt)

...this chapter book's most memorable element is also its most unusual: the imaginative conviction that art is alive.

A girl in a painting and a boy visiting the gallery she hangs in foil art thieves... MacKnight entices with art critique and technique. .For anyone who's wondered about the people inside the frames.

[A] delicious tale... [a] clever, satisfying story for art-loving readers ages 11-14.

Inspired by the author's lifelong love of art and the moving portraits in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, this inventive fantasy gives a second life to its painted subjects...Readers will delight in the canvas world that exists on the other side of the frame...this middle grade read paints fantasy, humor, and mystery into a satisfying tale about the power of friendship.

...this fantasy, supported by an inventive cast of characters, offers a compelling portrait of art and life.