MARIO’S ANGELS

Mario is a little boy, with a dog, who hovers around the artist Giotto as he paints a fresco of the Nativity in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy in the 13th century. When Father Prior comes in to say Giotto’s sky is dull, Giotto is upset, but Mario brings him the idea of his little sister Bianca as an angel. Giotto sketches a dancing, frolicking Mario as an angel, fills his Nativity sky with angels and everyone is pleased. While the text and notes mention how Giotto made his figures look real, as if they moved about and had expression, it does so at the expense of describing earlier painting as stiff and emotionless. The idea of perspective or of changing views of how art reflects humanity isn’t mentioned at all, and it could be, even at this level. Greeting-card images of late medieval life—and that puppy—reinforce the cute at the expense of the story. (Picture book. 4-7)