Belle

A wonderful story with realistic and captivating illustrations, this is the perfect way to introduce children to the world of Fine Art. The adventure begins when a butterfly, who’d been quietly hovering over a beautiful white poppy in a seventeenth-century Dutch still-life for three hundred years, suddenly finds herself flying out of her painting! Accidentally dislodged when the museum staff transports the canvas, Belle and her sidekick Brimstone must find their way back home. Because they are made of paint, they discover that they can blend into any of the other paintings in the museum. They travel through the galleries, morphing into and out of many different works of art as they search for their own painting. At the same time they must avoid becoming lunch for a hungry bird who, having been released from another painting by an awkward bump from Brimstone, is in hot pursuit.

Phyllis Saroff of Brookline, MA Phyllis Saroff is an artist whose work has appeared in books and magazines and her paintings of wildlife are used in outdoor displays in wildlife management areas across the country. She lives in Annapolis, MD.

Mary Lee Corlett Mary Lee Corlett is an art historian and a research associate at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. She lives with her husband and daughter in Falls Church, VA