Leonardo's Horse H

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Genre: Children: Grades 4-6; Juvenile literature; Children's 4-8 - Art and Art Instruction; Bronzes, American; Juvenile Fiction; Children's Books/Ages 4-8 Nonfiction; Horses in art; Art - Sculpture; Juvenile Fiction / Art and Architecture; Readers - Beginner; 20th century; Cavallo di Leonardo (Milan, It; Cavallo di Leonardo (Milan, Italy);

Average Review: 4 stars

Review: Leonardo's Horse trots to top ranking in my book! : If you like learning about Renaissance artists, then Leonardo's Horse is for you. Leonardo is shown as a person interested in many different areas of intelligence. This book focuses most on his painting and sculpture. A duke wanted him to make this gigantic bronze sculpture of a horse. Leonardo studied and studied, and he finally made a clay model of what the bronze horse would look like. He never got around to finishing it because the duke took all of his bronze for war supplies, and Leonardo was working on his famous painting, The Last Supper. As the French invaded Milan, they destroyed the clay horse. Even to his deathbed, Leonardo regretted never being able to finish the horse. The rest of this story relates the two artists that sought to honor Leonardo's legacy by completing the horse and presenting it as a gift of American friendship to Milan. Those artists were Charles Dent and Nina Akamu. A couple interesting features of the book are its shape and illustrations. The book has a half circle on top of the normal square shape. The illustrator makes good use of the irregularly shaped pages by making the top of the page the inside of a dome, an arched doorway, and more. There's a step-by-step chart to show how a sculpture is casted from clay to plaster to bronze. Overall, Jean Fritz and Hudson Talbott (author/artist) complement each other perfectly in this work.