Children’s Books: If These Paintings Could Talk

At this time of year, tourists choke the corridors of the Louvre leading to the gallery where Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting hangs behind bulletproof glass. To be in the crowd thronging to see the “Mona Lisa” is to feel jostled and overheated and, for the sensitive, complicit in a kind of cultural vandalism. The walls around the portrait are covered in splendid rivals, but no one bothers. Visitors want to get in, get a selfie and get out again.