What would you do if one of the most famous artists in the world landed on your doorstep? That's the premise behind a new book I got to review, Leonardo and the Time Travelers. Cousins Jack and Nick are in Silicon Valley for a summer technology class. They try out a time travel app they find, and bring back Leonardo Da Vinci! Astounded by technology, but extremely curious, he explores technology and art, and many of today's commonplace things - gelato, baths, solar panels, bike riding.
The book is really a neat book. It's not the first I've read about time travel and Leonardo, but it was still really fun to imagine just how he'd react to today's world, given how interested he was in progress and pushing the envelope with inventions. The quality of the book itself is superb too - it has a really nice feel to it, with nice illustrations and a printing and binding that make the book really feel special.
Leonardo and the Time Travelers is the product of a unique collaboration of five women from around the world who joined together to create a children’s book about learning and time travel during the pandemic.
In 2020, two grandmothers across the pond from each other decided to do something positive during the lockdown: to write a book inspired by their grandchildren. Marian Lye and Patty McGuigan share a set of lively grandkids, who were to be the heroes of a Silicon Valley adventure. But they needed an illustrator. Rebekah Reif, just turning 21 and graduating, joined the creative team. Next was Maria Mayer Feng, an incredible creative director in New York and then Kate Ryan, an editor who lives in Hawaii and understood the writers’ vision. The Circle of Five was established: women of all different ages, from Hawaii to England coming together to create Leonardo and the Time Travelers.
“The pandemic has brought many changes to our world. We were determined to produce something positive out of this time,” says author Patty McGuigan. “The five of us put our creativity to work and created this fun and inspiring story.”
This fall introduce kids to the genius of Leonardo Da Vinci and join him, Jack, Nick and Poppy on an adventurous journey and discover the answer to the big question – how to get their time travelers back home?
“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
- Leonardo da Vinci
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Patty McGuigan is the proud grandmother of four grandchildren. She is also a successful commercial real estate agent, a past high school English teacher, and active in her San Francisco Bay Area community. Patty has created numerous books of her artwork and travel memories. Her creativity has been her defining factor throughout her life, and indeed she does believe in time travel.
Marian Lye lives in Weymouth, England. She and her husband raised three boys, and she worked in administration for a government department for many years. Her love of history led her to write Weymouth at War, an account of World War 2 on the south coast of England. The book, now in its second edition, features the dramatic build up to D-Day in June 1944, when thousands of American servicemen set sail from the twin ports of Weymouth and Portland, bound for “Omaha Beach” in Normandy. In this millennium, the arrivals of three lively grandkids in California have been magical milestones.
Rebekah Reif is based in New Hampshire, where she recently graduated from the School of Art and Design at New England College. An up-and-coming artist, she has a natural talent for drawing, and amazed her collaborators on this project with every new scene she sketched out. Rebekah specializes in comics and enjoys drawing stories from battles to slices of everyday life.
To learn more about the creative team and Leonardo and the Time Travelers, visit leonardoandthetimetravelers.
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