Belle: The Amazing, Astonishing Magical Journey of an Artfully Painted Lady [Paperback]

Featuring the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC,?Belle?is an enthralling adventure through three hundred years of art! Belle, a painted butterfly, has been quietly hovering over a beautiful white poppy in a seventeenth-century Dutch painting that has been her home for three hundred years.? Suddenly and unexpectedly there is a sudden?whoosh?of air and she finds herself flying out of her picture into the void ?So begins the adventures of?Belle, the red admiral butterfly in Jan Davidsz de Heem's?Vase of Flowers.? Accidentally dislodged, when her painting was being taken by museum staff to be examined by the Conservation Department,?Belle?and her sidekick?Brimstone, a fellow butterfly who was ejected from the painting at the same time, must find their way back home. ? ?When their painting rolls into an elevator without them, their journey through the art museum begins.? Because they are made of paint, they discover that they can blend into any of the other paintings in the museum, no matter what the subject or period.? The characters travel through the museum galleries, morphing into and out of paintings by multiple artists and in many styles, while searching for their home painting. At the same time they must avoid becoming lunch for a painted bird in hot pursuit after being inadvertently released from another painting by an awkward bump from?Brimstone! ? Belle?and?Brimstone?tell their story as it happens with all the scary encounters and comic incidents that have them hiding out in unlikely places in the paintings they encounter. They dash and dart as the predatory bird flies after them, chasing them from room to room. Successful and safe in the end?Brimstone?is up for more adventures.?Belle?is not so sure! Maybe it will be safer if they stay put in their painting from now on. Can you find them? ?While the story is an adventure story written for young readers it will also enchant younger listeners. Featuring the collection of the National Gallӥ