Masterpiece
(Masterpiece Adventures)

Author

Elise Broach

Illustrator

Kelly Murphy

Publication Date

March 30, 2010

Genre / Grade Band

Fiction / 4^th − 5^th

Language

English

Paperback

Description

After 11-year-old James gets a pen-and-ink set for his birthday, Marvin, a beetle, 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. Illustrations.

Publication date

March 30, 2010

Genre

Fiction

ISBN-13

9780312608705

Lexile Measure

700

Guided Reading Level

Publisher

Square Fish

Series

Masterpiece Adventures

BISAC categories

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review

Inventive ... Broach ... packs this fast-moving story with perennially seductive themes: hidden lives and secret friendships, miniature worlds lost to disbelievers ... Broach and Kelly show readers something new.

Kirkus

Delightful intricacies of beetle life—a cottonball bed, playing horseshoes with staples and toothpicks—blend seamlessly with the suspenseful caper as well as the sentimental story of a complicated-but-rewarding friendship that requires a great deal of frantic leg-wiggling on Marvin’s part. Murphy’s charming pen-and-ink drawings populate the short chapters of this funny, winsome novel.