My 12 year old son is a non-bookworm reader and a keen artist, and although he enjoys fiction, he’s recently been gravitating towards non-fiction. This book – The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, A Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity (Random House, 2023) – is narrative non-fiction for kids, and had all the right ingredients for him.
The book tells the story in two timelines, switching between Renaissance Florence and early twentieth century Paris, telling the story of how the picture came to be painted, how it was stolen, and the resolution of the case. The two things that stood out so much that he shared them with us as he read were (spoiler alerts!) that the Mona Lisa wasn’t a particularly famous painting until after it was stolen. And that it was stolen for an unusual reason – not for gain or simple possession but because the thief, a patriotic Italian, thought that da Vinci’s picture should be on display in Italy, not in France.
The book reads as part history, part crime thriller, and there are lively pencil illustrations throughout. The voice is entertaining as it follows first the painting of the picture and then the police investigating and my son enjoyed the mixture of history and mystery.
Lots of other people have enjoyed this one too, it’s won a number of awards, including the Robert F. Sibert Medal. And we’ve recently started getting The Week Junior delivered, and found that it’s included in their Summer of Reading feature ‘The 50 Books Kids Love Most’ (June 5, 2026, vol.7, issue 320) as one of the non-fiction favourites.
Having enjoyed The Mona Lisa Vanishes (and read some other history, notably a book about Rasputin), he’s now trying another historical non-fiction adventure story, The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II, by Candace Fleming (Scholastic, 2024). So far, it seems to be fun, and is getting him interested in ciphers.
P.S. What I’m reading. Having said I’m not much of a true crime reader, I recently started Kate Summerscale’s The Peepshow: The Murders at Rillington Place (Penguin, 2025), which is already capturing the world of the UK tabloids in the 1950s and I’m hoping it’s as much about the press as it is about the crime.
Books for Our Children 