M Is For Masterpiece

This comprehensive children's guide to fine art covers important artists, styles, techniques, and various media from around the world. Full color.

Marvin lives with his family under the kitchen sink in the Pompadays' apartment. He is very much a beetle. James Pompaday lives with his family in New York City. He is very much an eleven-year-old boy.After James gets a pen-and-ink set for his birthday, Marvin surprises him by creating an elaborate miniature drawing. James gets all the credit for the picture and before these unlikely friends know it they are caught up in a staged art heist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that could help recover a famous drawing by Albrecht Dürer. But James can't go through with the plan without Marvin's help. And that's where things get really complicated (and interesting!). This fast-paced mystery will have young readers on the edge of their seats as they root for boy and beetle. In Shakespeare's Secret Elise Broach showed her keen ability to weave storytelling with history and suspense, and Masterpiece is yet another example of her talent. This time around it's an irresistible miniature world, fascinating art history, all wrapped up in a special friendship— something for everyone to enjoy. Masterpiece is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

The Masterpiece follows an ambitious set of paintbrushes as they set out to create a grand work of art. But will their goals be derailed when some of the paintbrushes display unusual behavior, or will they all learn how to work together, no matter what? Join a spunky collection of paintbrushes as they set out to create a grand masterpiece. When some of the brushes don't cooperate, is it because they are misbehaving...or is there another reason entirely? In this story, an initiative of REED Foundation for Autism, young readers are introduced to some of the behavioral differences in their peers with autism. Without ever mentioning any particular challenge or disability by name, this story helps children recognize and understand what autism is, and impress upon them the importance of showing kindness to those who are different, wrapped into a fun story with lighthearted, engaging characters.

The Gospel as You've Never Seen It Before! "If Romans isn't one of your favorite books, then you do not have a revelation of the true Gospel!" - Andrew Wommack Nowhere besides the book of Romans is there a more comprehensive explanation of the Gospel. It's Paul's masterful letter to every believer revealing God's plan of salvation by grace-not by the Law. In Romans: Paul's Masterpiece on Grace, renown Bible teacher Andrew Wommack has compiled decades of his personal notes and commentary from his Life for Today and Living Commentary. You will find thousands of insightful truths to give you a firm understanding of the Gospel as Andrew shares... The true meaning of salvation The basics of righteousness by faith Vital Bible teaching you probably have never heard in church You will be blessed and enlightened as Andrew walks you through Paul's letter to you. These truths have been changing lives for thousands of years. Yours is next!

Quelle horreur! A French holiday leads to disaster for American Anglophile Dorothy Martin in this engaging new cozy mystery. When Dorothy Martin goes to France – alone because Alan is stuck back home in Sherebury with a broken ankle – she worries about her ability to get along in a language she barely speaks, and in a country she hasn’t seen for over fifty years. But by the time Alan joins her a week later, Dorothy has found herself embroiled in one mystery after another: a woman drowning in quicksand; a man suffering a near-fatal fall in the abbey at Mont Saint Michel; and a missing American archaeologist – all seemingly connected to a monk named Abelard who has been dead for almost nine hundred years. It isn’t until another body is discovered that Dorothy’s ability to ‘think outside the box’ finally unravels the threads of a despicable scheme.

'HIS MASTERPIECE,' which in the original French bears the title ofL'Oeuvre, is a strikingly accurate story of artistic life in Paris during the latter years of the Second Empire. Amusing at times, extremely pathetic and even painful at others, it not only contributes a necessary element to the Rougon-Macquart series of novels—a series illustrative of all phases of life in France within certain dates—but it also represents a particular period of M. Zola's own career and work. Some years, indeed, before the latter had made himself known at all widely as a novelist, he had acquired among Parisian painters and sculptors considerable notoriety as a revolutionary art critic, a fervent champion of that 'Open-air' school which came into being during the Second Empire, and which found its first real master in Edouard Manet, whose then derided works are regarded, in these later days, as masterpieces. Manet died before his genius was fully recognised; still he lived long enough to reap some measure of recognition and to see his influence triumph in more than one respect among his brother artists. Indeed, few if any painters left a stronger mark on the art of the second half of the nineteenth century than he did, even though the school, which he suggested rather than established, lapsed largely into mere impressionism—a term, by the way, which he himself coined already in 1858; for it is an error to attribute it—as is often done—to his friend and junior, Claude Monet. It was at the time of the Salon of 1866 that M. Zola, who criticised that exhibition in the Evenement newspaper,* first came to the front as an art critic, slashing out, to right and left, with all the vigour of a born combatant, and championing M. Manet—whom he did not as yet know personally—with a fervour born of the strongest convictions. He had come to the conclusion that the derided painter was being treated with injustice, and that opinion sufficed to throw him into the fray; even as, in more recent years, the belief that Captain Dreyfus was innocent impelled him in like manner to plead that unfortunate officer's cause. When M. Zola first championed Manet and his disciples he was only twenty-six years old, yet he did not hesitate to pit himself against men who were regarded as the most eminent painters and critics of France; and although (even as in the Dreyfus case) the only immediate result of his campaign was to bring him hatred and contumely, time, which always has its revenges, has long since shown how right he was in forecasting the ultimate victory of Manet and his principal methods....

"Mysterious assailant has tied a nameless Text to a railroad track ... untenured English professor ... enlists a group of odd and oddly rivalrous academicians to help her identify and save the Text"--Back cover.

I Am A Masterpiece is a self esteem building, child friendly book written poetically to pique the interest of youth and encourage responsibility, diversity, love of self, Language Arts, and communication