Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Master Read Online Free PDF

Landers was saying.
    Renaissance means rebirth
.
    Would Great-Uncle Thorne, lying in a coma at Newport General Hospital, be reborn?
    Would his parents’ marriage, despite Bruce Fishbaum, finally be reborn?
    Would Amy Pickworth, whose story still remained untold, be reborn?
    How could he possibly listen to Miss Landers talk about something that happened centuries ago when right now his whole world needed to be reborn?
    While Felix considered all of this, somehow the art teacher, Ms. Silva, had appeared at the microphone.
    Ms. Silva wore long flowing caftans. Her hair, long and wavy, was streaked with gray. A large woman, she somehow managed to move gracefully, as if she were floating. Even when Felix, who did not take art, saw her in the hallways, she seemed to float in her colorful clothes, her multitude of bangle bracelets and bells around her ankles making a sound track to Ms. Silva.
    â€œOh, sixth-graders!” she crooned, clapping her hands together in front of the microphone and releasing more jingles and jangles than usual. “Oh, sixth-graders! The Renaissance! I will be your guide through Florence. I will show you art. And artists. And”—here she paused dramatically and took a breath so deep that the sound of it magnified through the microphone made everyone titter.
    â€œAnd! Sixth-graders! You will learn the names of artists, like my personal favorite, Piero della Francesca. Artists so magnificent that . . .”
    Ms. Silva became overcome by the magnificence of the Renaissance artists, and without finishing her talk, was led from the stage.
    Miss Landers recovered quickly.
    â€œTogether, we will have a Renaissance fair, to which all of your parents will be invited. Jennifer Twill will play the
lira da braccio
, which is a Renaissance violin she has mastered.”
    The class snickered. Jennifer Twill did only odd things.
    â€œNow, class, I want to remind you of Jennifer’s hammered dulcimer performance at last year’s Christmas party, and her wonderful contra dancing at the end-of-the-year talent show.”
    This only led to more snickering, but Miss Landers continued.
    â€œ
This
year, at the end of the unit, we will hold our own Renaissance fair. Ms. Silva will do workshops on masks, and Mrs. Witherspoon will hold cooking classes so that you can prepare a feast for the fair.”
    Miss Landers sighed happily.
    â€œThe Renaissance,” she said.

    Dear Lily,
    A lot has been going on at Anne Hutchinson Elementary School. For one thing, there are new kids. Twins! For another thing, Maisie got the lead in the play, which is
The Crucible
. (Maybe you are also reading this play? I like to think that sixth grades everywhere are doing the exact same thing, even in Cleveland.)
    And now we are beginning a unit on the Renaissance. We have to make masks with Ms. Silva and food with Mrs. Witherspoon and put on an entire fair. To tell you the truth, I kind of stopped listening during the assembly because so much is going on at Elm Medona. The biggest thing, the worst thing, is that Great-Uncle Thorne is in the intensive care unit of the hospital. My mother said it doesn’t look good.
    I know I have not been a good friend. I haven’t stayed in touch the way I promised. Because I don’t have an e-mail address, I couldn’t e-mail you. But I could have written a real letter, like I’m doing now. Still, I think about you at least once every day. Sometimes even more.
    Lily, Renaissance means rebirth. So now I am trying to be reborn as a better friend.
    Felix Robbins
    PS Did you notice the red seal on the back of this envelope???????
    PPS I hope you write back.

    â€œOnce,” Jim Duncan said as he and Maisie and Felix walked to school the next day, “my family went to Florence. We spent three weeks in Italy. One in Rome. One in Venice. One in Florence.”
    â€œThat’s nice,” Felix said, but he couldn’t really listen. He could only think