'Secret Scouts and the Lost Leonardo': YA Novel for All Ages About Dutch Kids in King da Vinci's Court

Interest in the hot-off-the-presses YA novel Secret Scouts and the Lost Leonardo originates with a hope of being among the first to discover the next Harry Potter caliber book series, This inaugural outing for Dutch sisters Lisa and Sophie and the bros next door Jack and Tom does not seem to be quite that captivating. However authors/parents Dennis and Wendel Kind tell a fascinating tale that lacks any dull moments. They additional offer proof that European and North American tweens generally talk, think, and act alike.

The following YouTube clip of the trailer for Leonardo both demonstrates a clever marketing technique for a book and provides a strong sense of the fun and adventure that awaits readers of all ages. One disclaimer is that some depicted scenes get cut from the novel. 

The adventure begins with a crazy ermine lady neighbor giving the girls an old sketch that this woman acquires from the former occupant of the house where the sisters live with their mother and their art historian father. The  girls and their buds then enter the forbidden territory of the study of the father of the girls, Horseplay by the boys leads to discovering a secret room behind a study bookcase. The treasures within include an old notebook.

Our young detectives soon correctly suspect that both the sketch and the book are the work of  the titular Renaissance man; they next determine how to combine the discovered fruits of his labor to pay him a visit. This leads to these meddling kids both literally and figuratively having a hand in real-life work of da Vinci. These incidents explaining some mysteries regarding that work keeps things interesting in the context of a art-history lesson.

The manner in which the quartet reasons out things and get adults to provide necessary information is amusing to readers with secondary sexual characteristics and should allow younger readers to fantasize about being in the shoes of these adventurers. This fun includes a serious discussion about the need to appropriately dress for their journey and how to make sure that they arrive at the right place at the right time. 

Speaking of journeys, getting there is more than half the fun this time,. The girls coincidentally going to Paris and visit the Louvre soon after acquiring their treasure trove helps them put the pieces together. We also get a teacher being duped into believing that he merely is quenching a thirst for knowledge. 

All of this ends on a cliffhanger that relates to a period that likely seems to be as ancient as fifteenth-century Italy to the Millennials but is the not-so-distant past to those of us who can legally drink.

A glimpse of the future reveals that the next adventure for the scouts involves events that some will consider an obamanation.