Was Pippo the Fool really Pippo the Genius?
The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence was a marvel of art, architecture, and engineering. But it lacked a finishing ornament, a crown--a dome! The city fathers had a solution: to invite the finest masters to compete for the chance to design a dome. The rumors of this contest reached the ears of Filippo Brunelleschi, better known in Florence as Pippo the Fool. As soon as he heard about the contest, Pippo knew it was the chance he had been waiting for. "If I can win the contest, I will finally lose that nickname once and for all!"
This book tells the story of the construction of an architectural masterpiece--Brunelleschi's Dome. Tracey E. Fern depicts Pippo's prickly personality with humor and warmth, and Pau Estrada's richly detailed illustrations bring Renaissance Florence to life. An excellent way to introduce kids to an important moment in Western engineering and history.
"With a great deal of charm and buttressed by understated humor, Fern tells a fictionalized story of Renaissance architect and engineer Filippo Brunellischi and his most magnificent work, the dome of the Cathedral of Florence. When word comes out of a contest to determine who will design the dome, Pippo, a goldsmith known for his beautiful but useless oddities, is determined to win and shed his unwanted nickname. The judges decide upon his visionary design but also decree that he must work in concert with his chief rival and primary heckler, Lorenzo. Pippo is dismayed at the prospect of doing all the work and only receiving half the glory, but his determination to see his plan through to fruition wins out. Throughout, Estrada's timeless art highlights Florence's orange-roofed architecture and colorfully attired citizens. Readers won't realize just how massive a project constructing the dome really was until they arrive at the scale-shifting detail of tiny workers, scaffolds, and cranes, a scene like something from David Macaulay's The Way Things Work (1988). Although the primary drama between Pippo and Lorenzo is played out with grade-school churlishness, it offers a handy morality lesson: take joy in one's accomplishments rather than the accolades to which they might lead. An afterword fleshes out some of the historical and engineering details of the dome for those inquisitive about the Renaissance."-- Booklist, starred review
Tracey E. Fern writes for various magazines and is the author of children's historical books including, BUFFALO MUSIC (Clarion), DARE THE WIND (FSG), and W IS FOR WEBSTER (Melanie Kroupa Books). She lives in West Newton, Massachusetts.
Pau Estrada (Barcelona, 1961) is an illustrator, writer and documentary film maker. He studied English philology at the University of Barcelona and illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States as a Fulbright scholar. He has illustrated many children's books both in Spain and in the United States.
Charlesbridge Publishing
Target Age: 5-8
Pub Date: February 01, 2011
0.23" H x 11.05" L x 8.35" W
48 pages
paperback