Enchanting Review: Matisse On The Loose

MATISSE ON THE LOOSE
GEORGIA BRAGG
Contemporary Middle Grade
Delacorte Press
ISBN# 978-0385735704
$16.99
160 Pages
Hardcover--Available July 14, 2009

Rating: 3 Enchantments

Matisse is in trouble. It’s not bad enough that he has some of the strangest parents around or that his older sister had an almost unhealthy love for the color purple, but he’s gone and done something that could not only cost his mom her job as head of security for the museum, but also take away his freedom.

Matisse is an interesting and somewhat unique middle grade character with a talent for art. Easily embarrassed by his family, although who wouldn’t be with the description of his father’s homemade barbecue on the opening pages of the book, Matisse is desperate to prove he’s not as weird as them. As a talented artist who makes copies of the museum’s masterpieces, the reader kind of gets the idea that Matisse is headed for trouble when he decides to see what his version of the picture would look like hanging on the wall.

MATISSE ON THE LOOSE was an okay middle grade read. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t dislike it either. There were some aspects of the story that seemed rushed along, and every time Matisse tried to get the real painting back, there was always something holding him back. I did really like the scene where the cop was chasing him through the museum, with Matisse panicking he’d been found out, when the cop was merely the son one of the volunteers who wanted him to meet. The situation at the end with the real Pierre Matisse did seem a little farfetched to me and sort of pulled me from the storyline. All in all, I liked the characters in MATISSE ON THE LOOSE, but some of the scenes did pull me from the story.

Georgia Bragg’s father, mother, and brother are all artists, and Georgia is too. She was a printmaker, a painter, and a storyboard artist before becoming a writer. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two children, and two cats.

Lisa
Enchanting Reviews
June 2009