Leonardo's Horse by Jean Fritz

It’s Friday! You know what that means.

Today’s Fantastic (Non)Fiction Friday pick has nothing to do with Andy Warhol. Or Pop Art. Sorry if you were looking forward to that. Hopefully I’ll stumble upon a good Andy Warhol book in the future.

Leonardo da Vinci was an artist, an inventor, an architect, an engineer, a musician. He was many things other than an artist and he had widespread dreams. One of those dreams was to build a bronze horse that was three times the size of a living horse.

Da Vinci was hired by the duke of Milan to build this horse. He sculpted the massive horse out of clay but couldn’t figure out to cast it in bronze.

Jean Fritz tells this story in Leonardo’s Horse. But the story doesn’t stop there. Fritz shows us how Leonardo finally got his horse, 500 years later.

This is a lovely story that would be a good read aloud, especially for children in 2nd or 3rd grade. I especially love how clearly this book explains how such a large sculpture is cast into bronze.

Return to main page.