Have you ever spent time looking at a great work of art and found yourself lost in it? Literally lost in it, wandering around a water lily pond or gallivanting through haystacks? Then maybe you are a Restorationist, who can get sucked into a painting like a portal into another world.
We pre-ordered Between Flowers and Bones by Carolyn Leiloglou—I do that exactly never, but my daughter loved the first book of the Restorationist series so much that I had to. This is the second in the series, and I liked it better than the first, which, for me, is not typical in a middle-grade book series.
To give you a little background, the Restorationists are a group of people who travel through paintings (by magic, not science). Restorationists can enter the world of a famous painting by getting close to it—but they aren’t the only ones with that ability. The Distortionists can also enter paintings, but they choose to use their ability to embed subliminal propaganda messages – “distortions”—into paintings, to provoke angry or unsettling emotions in their viewers of the paintings.
For example, in this book a painting of a mountain is distorted into a painting of an erupting volcano—the painting looks no different from the outside, but those who enter the painting can see and be harmed by the changes.
The Restorationists work to correct the distortions, bringing peace to all those museum-goers and consequently stabilizing society. But, after a mass attack from the Distortionists a decade before, the Restorationist numbers have dwindled to one small family.
I would recommend reading this series in order, starting with Beneath the Swirling Sky, which follows Vincent (named after the painter, Vincent Van Gogh), who discovers his family identity as a Restorationist and the world of entering paintings while on a visit to his great uncle’s farm. When his adopted little sister Lili accidently enters a painting and is kidnapped, he and his quirky cousin Georgia use their Restorationist talents and teamwork to get her back.
Vincent’s cousin Georgia (named after the painter, Georgia O’Keefe, which the title of the book references) is the protagonist of Between Flowers and Bones. She is a homeschooled girl who is wrestling with feelings of jealousy and inadequacy in the face of her talented and rare-gifted cousin Vincent’s entrance into this family secret ability.
When we first began the book as a family read aloud, I wasn’t sure what I thought about switching to the main point of view of a different character for the second book of the series—the first had done so much to endear Vincent to the reader’s heart, so I assumed the story would continue from his perspective. But I quickly found that I adored Georgia, perhaps even more than Vincent. She’s feisty and unguarded with her opinions and unashamed of her interests.
I particularly appreciated that Georgia is a homeschooler. Homeschoolers are vastly underrepresented in literature, and my children loved seeing a character who lives a life similar to their own—minus the trips to Italy and traveling through famous artworks, of course.
There are some prodigal son overtones in this book, since Georgia, like the prodigal son’s older brother, has always been part of the Restorationist world and Vincent is a newcomer, who at first rejected the gift of painting. Georgia struggles to figure out where she fits in with the family now that he is there. Anyone who has done their best and all the right things, yet still found themselves second-fiddle can relate to how Georgia feels.
My art-loving homeschooled kids ate this book up. There’s going to be one more in the series from the perspective of another side-character, Ravi—but I wish there were going to be five. The world of great art leaves much to explore, and we wouldn’t mind poking around in paintings for a few more books.
She is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2023), and the middle-grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike.
For her book reviews for the whole family, check out her monthly Renee's Book Bag on Substack.
- Review: Between Flowers and Bones by Carolyn Leiloglou - November 25, 2024
- Beads and Buttons: A Poem - August 14, 2024
- Left in the Rain - July 24, 2024
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