Monday with a Mad Genius

Mary Pope Osborne's Monday with a Mad Genius is a time-travel adventure for 7 year olds about spending one entire day as Leonardo da Vinci's apprentice.

What happens

Merlin is unhappy and unwell, and Morgan wants Jack and Annie to find four secrets of happiness for him. This is the second one. The rhyme they are given says the question is simple but simple answers might be wrong, and that they must help the genius all day long.

Finding him is the first problem. The flower girl says he just left. The weaver saw him go by. The baker says he bought his daily loaf. The cheese man says he has gone to the blacksmith. The blacksmith says he has gone to the market, in a hurry, as usual.

When they finally meet him, Leonardo is paying a bird seller to let a caged bird go free, because he has spent his whole life wishing he could fly.

Then he tells them the secret of happiness is fame. Jack remembers the rhyme.

What makes this one lovely is Leonardo's company. He will tell you there are ten kinds of nose, or eleven if you look at people face on. He asks what shape the clouds are and gets very excited when Annie says one is a Scottie puppy. He hears the cathedral bells telling him to get to work.

He is also completely all over the place. He invented an oil paint that dries slowly and now his enormous wall painting will not dry at all.

Two things to flag. That wall painting is a battle, and the book does not soften it. Men slashing at each other over a flag, faces twisted, mouths snarling, horses wild. Jack calls it the scariest painting he has ever seen, and Leonardo says he painted it that way because he thinks war is a beastly madness.

And later there is a crash. Leonardo tries out a flying machine off a steep hill, comes down hard and lies still, and for a moment Jack thinks they have killed him. He is scraped rather than badly hurt. What he is, though, is heartbroken, and the story stays with him in that. It is honest and quite sad, and a younger 7 year old may want you nearby for it.

What to read next

For a child who asks why about everything, spending a Monday with someone who asks why about everything is a real treat. Mozart is next, in Moonlight on the Magic Flute, which involves a palace, a wig, an enormous hoopskirt and a small boy who lets the zoo animals out.