Young Leonardo

Created by the French draftsman and illustrator, William Augel, Young Leonardo is a charming work of fiction inspired by the real-life of Leonardo da Vinci. Here we meet Leonardo as a young boy living with his family in the 15th-century Italian countryside. In an interview published for the New York Public Library, Augel talks about how his visit to the village of Vinci near Florence in Tuscany where Leonardo's childhood home still exists helped him create the atmosphere of the place which shows in the colorful panels throughout the book. The artwork reminds you of the playful lines by Charles M. Schulz. The book follows Leonardo's adventures as a curious boy as he makes art, invents curious contraptions and machines inspired by nature, sculpts, often procrastinates between several ideas and projects, and vacillates between his dreams of becoming at once a writer, an artist, an engineer, a botanist, or a musician. The book has a lovely guide at the end for young readers to explore Leonardo's life and work with discussion themes. That said the book offers the simplicity as well as the complexity of the beautiful mind of one of the greatest polymaths that ever walked the earth which makes it equally enjoyable for adult readers as well. Augel is working on the next comic Young Agatha Christie and I am very much looking forward to reading it too.