LAR'S LIBRARY: MY REVIEW OF ELISE BROACH'S "MASTERPIECE"

MASTERPIECE. By Elise Broach. Illustrated by Kelly Murphy. Feiwel and Friends, 2010 (paperback), 2008. 304 pages.

E.B. White, George Selden. Sophisticated little animals. Manhattanites of yesteryear, with their glib savoir faire and urban obtuseness. Witty, well-chosen language. It’s counterintuitive that it still sells.

Stuart Little and The Cricket in Times Square still do, thankfully. People just won’t give up on literate, if retrograde, children’s literature, because reading it, particularly reading it aloud, remains such a delight.

Masterpiece could have been published 50 years ago with hardly a raised eyebrow at anachronism. It’s the story of a family of beetles (they wouldn’t be cockroaches, would they, even if that is far more likely) who live under the kitchen sink in the Pompadays’ (love that) apartment.

James Pompaday, an insecure eleven-year-old, forms a secret friendship with the artistic member of the beetle family, Marvin. Because of Marvin’s skill, James’s superficial mother and stepfather, as well as his earnest, estranged father—there’s something that might not have flown in 1960—come to believe that James can use pen and ink as adroitly as, say, Albrecht Durer.

It’s a clever premise that allows Elise Broach to introduce young readers to the world of medieval art curatorship, and more thrillingly, to the history of art theft. It’s up to James, and especially Marvin, to solve a most daring heist—from the New York Museum of Modern Art, no less.

Marvin, James, and the lovely MOMA caretaker Christina Balcony are an engaging trio of lead characters. The Pompadays and Marvin’s family add some nice comic relief. Kelly Murphy’s pen-and-ink illustrations are a perfect thematic match with the text, a mystery that holds onto the necessary suspense and excitement.

Broach’s homage to White and Selden earns her a place on bookshelves next to them.

Recommended for fourth graders on up.