On a field trip to an Illinois art museum, 12-year-old Claudia Miravista sees a blue-eyed boy peering out of a 17th-century Dutch painting. When the boy appears again in her own bedroom, in a painting the budding artist has painted herself, she knows she's not just going crazy.
Behind the Canvas by Alexander Vance (The Heartbreak Messenger) is the story of Claudia's fantastical, sometimes comical adventures in the world "behind the canvas," where every oil painting ever painted is a gateway between realms. The Dutch boy from the painting is Pim, who tells Claudia that 360 years ago, he was cursed by a witch to live out his days in a perilous parallel reality. The two lonely children become fast friends, and Claudia vows to help him escape his unbearable prison. But to do so, she must break the witch's curse, which means venturing behind the canvas herself. Once ensconced in this realm of patchwork landscapes, Claudia learns that she may be a magical Artisti, and the scope of her mission escalates dramatically. Run-ins with a rash of Cubist clowns and the Mona Lisa, who says "like" a lot and spits on Monet's water lilies, keep things hopping as Vance explores the idea that art is its own sort of magic.
Extensive footnotes--funny and irreverent--document famous artists and movements, and while reading, it's fun to search for images to understand better, for example, why a person might not want to tumble into a grisly Caravaggio painting or meet Saint George's dragon (as painted by Rubens) in person. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness