People tend to think that heroes are boring, and villains are interesting. As a result, flawed anti-heroes are more of the way to go in all genres of storytelling. But when done right, a truly moral and unyielding character can stand out from the other bland, one-dimensional heroes. Daisy Tannenbaum is one such hero.
In the third installment of the Daisy Tannenbaum series by J.T. Allen, the story’s hero quickly captured my attention and had me rooting for her and her unyielding goodness, bravery, and moral center. Being unfamiliar with the series, I jumped into Book 3 with a lot of catching up to do, but I soon did catch up, and in the end, I came out with a great admiration for this character and the adventures that she encounters. Below is my review of Daisy and the Missing Mona Lisa followed by an interview with Allen about his book.
Daisy and the Missing Mona Lisa plot synopsis
Preteen Daisy Tannenbaum is living in Paris with her Aunt Mill when she’s asked to help Aunt Mill’s old friend, Felix Pindenhaus, catalog his art collection. For the next two weeks, Daisy stays at Felix’s eerie, possibly haunted chateau and forms a bond with Felix. In return, Felix gifts Daisy with a nearly perfect replica of the Mona Lisa.
This innocent gesture creates a big headache for Daisy when Felix dies soon after she finishes her task and his family accuses Daisy of stealing the painting. Suspecting that they want to use the forgery in a ploy to steal the actual Mona Lisa, Daisy and her friends set off on an adventure to honor Felix’s wishes and keep the painting out of the thieves’ hands.
The moral
The title of the book suggests that we’re about to read an adventurous mystery book. But as it unfolds, our expectations turn on their head. This story is more about personal authenticity and the desire to honor a person’s final wishes rather than chasing fame, fortune, or treasure.
Daisy is an authentic character who takes her duty seriously. She’s asked to help out Felix because she’s a trustworthy person and is rewarded as such. But trust comes with a price, and Daisy’s responsibility towards the painting she is given, while a forgery is highly valuable, grows until she’s willing to take desperate measures to keep it out of the wrong hands. For Daisy, it’s not about gloating over a pricey replica of a famous painting; it’s about preserving her aunt’s friend’s legacy and wishes.
The setting
Setting the story in France gives Daisy’s life an already romanticized feel. Other than her daily dose of math problems assigned by Aunt Mill, Daisy is free to spend her days in equally educational, though unorthodox ways. This gives her a worldly quality that allows her to maneuver through the city streets which are described from a local’s point of view.
Daisy also speaks the language, and Allen weaves the French language throughout the book in such an organic way that makes the scenes more authentic without losing the English-speaking audience. Daisy is good at filling us in on what is being said to her without halting the story, often by answering in English or translating for other characters which kills two birds with one stone.
The characters
At the same time, Daisy does sound like a teenage girl. She and her friends engage in all of the right levels of sarcasm, teen speak, and small talk that sounds like young girls should without being too of their time or too generic. That’s hard to juggle, especially as language among teenagers is so quick to change and become outdated.
It helps that Daisy is an intelligent girl. However, she’s still relatable and approachable. Somehow, she’s able to keep one foot in her youth and one in sophistication, and Allen blends the two so seamlessly that you can tell he has such a strong grasp on this character. This is made even more apparent on his website which contains several blog posts written from Daisy’s point of view.
Allen also has crafted an interesting character in Daisy’s friend Lucia, who is visiting Paris while trying to land some modeling gigs. Lucia plays against type as a caring and loyal friend to Daisy who is less self-assured despite walking runways and turning heads everywhere she goes. However, there is not an ounce of jealousy between the two friends, only support as Daisy makes time to support Lucia by helping her get to gigs and cheering her on during shows while Lucia helps Daisy protect her painting and eventually accompanies her on a dangerous mission in an attempt to retrieve it when it is stolen.
My recommendation
I recommend Daisy and the Missing Mona Lisa to middle grade to young YA readers who are looking for a grounded adventure story with likeable and interesting characters, a touch of danger and eeriness, and a unique European flavor. My only criticism is that the climax of the story seemed a bit abrupt without a truly satisfying showdown. But it’s also a more realistic and intelligent turn of events, which is exactly on brand for Daisy.
My rating
An interview with J.T. Allen
How did writing this book differ from the others in the series?
When I wrote Daisy and the Pirates, I didn’t know I was writing a series. I also had a complete outline before I started, because I’d pitched the story as a movie. Also, my daughters were still young, so their voices were always in my ear.
Daisy in Exile started out as blog posts. My youngest daughter suggested I do a Daisy blog. Thus, “My Stupid Journal” was born. (Aunt Mill requires Daisy to keep a journal as part of Daisy’s homeschooling program.)
That ended up taking on the shape of a story, with a chapter coming out every week or so, though I didn’t have an outline when I started and had to devise one along the way. That first draft meandered along for eighteen months and required a massive edit.
With this newest Daisy story, Daisy and the Missing Mona Lisa, I knew she would remain in Paris, already had a cast of characters to lean on, and had lots of practice writing Daisy’s first-person voice. She grows up a little in each book, and her French goes from not knowing a word, to absorbing a fair amount of it.
But I’d set precedent and expectation. I found myself asking, would Daisy do this? Is this a true Daisy caper? Is this too repetitive? Yikes! Luckily, I had Catherine Frank as editor on all three stories and she wisely adjudicated those issues (I gravely tried her patience, though).
Besides it being the most famous painting in the world, why did you choose to feature the Mona Lisa as the forgery that Daisy is gifted?
All three of the Daisy books so far are about authenticity on some level.
D-1: Is my fantasy of an island paradise real? D-2: Are the diamonds real? D-3: What’s the value of a painting that obviously isn’t real, but is exactly identical to the authentic one?
Once I learned about Hitler hanging the Mona Lisa in his office after pillaging France and how furious he became when his art experts told him his Mona was a fake, I knew Mona had to be the one.
Also, Mona Lisa is often described as the most beautiful painting in the world and even the most beautiful woman in the world, neither of which are necessarily true (portraits from that era of Simonetta Vespucci and Genevra de Benci argue otherwise).
But Leonardo infuses Mona with this serenity and nobility, a kind of inner beauty, or sprezzatura. When I read about sprezzatura, it sounded like a Renaissance form of Zen Buddhism. This concept of sprezzatura helped clinch the Lucia subplot for me, of finding or mastering her spezzatura so she could remain poised on the runway.
What’s your opinion on the value that we put on famous artwork?
Well, it’s certainly fun to write about. Though it is important to clarify the difference between cultural or aesthetic value as opposed to monetary value. Since the going value of a Vermeer is something like a quarter million dollars per square inch, we find drug cartels using stolen old masters as collateral for gigantic drug deals.
Since a million dollars in small bills weighs over fifty pounds, it’s much easier to sneak a Vermeer across borders than several dozen suitcases stuffed with dollars. Simon Houpt, in his book Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft, estimated that six billion dollars in art is stolen each year and that if all the stolen art could be assembled, it would fill a museum the size of the Louvre. That’s a bit crazy.
As for cultural and aesthetic value, I think we’re amazingly lucky to have so much art on view to the public. That wasn’t always the case. Aside from chopping off aristocratic heads, the French Revolutionaries threw open the doors to the Louvre so the public could see what all the fuss was about. That was in 1793, but most of the rest of the world didn’t get around to opening their collections to the public until the 20th Century.
When my wife and I lived in Paris they had one free Sunday at the Louvre every month. We lived a short walk away and went every time we could. It’s fun to visit and revisit a favorite painting, to leave when you begin to get eye fatigue because you know you’ll be back, to linger over a handful of paintings instead of rushing through the whole inventory for fear you’ll never be back again.
What places in France depicted in the book do you most recommend readers visit if they can?
Chinon is a lovely town. Entirely walkable, full of history, and a great base for visiting nearby chateaux like Villandry, Azay-le-Rideau, and Chenonceaux. Gracious, stately Fontevraud-l’Abbe is nearby too, where Eleanor of Aquitaine is buried. Just down the road is the Musée des Blindés, or tank museum, in Saumur, with the largest collection of armored vehicles in the world, in case you need a break from chateaux.
In Paris, the Restaurant Chartier, at 7 rue du Faubourg Montmartre, is much as it is described in the book, bustling, traditional, not such a bargain as it used to be, but still a good value. Likewise, Le Saint-Gervais Café still operates at 96 rue Vieille-du-Temple, two doors down form where we lived. It has changed owners at least once since we lived there, and the food is much better. But I’ve entirely invented Monsieur and Madame Rose, so if you go in asking for them, the real owners will be baffled.
Le Saint-Gervais Café is around the corner form the Hôtel Salé (the Picasso Museum) and another block or so from the Musée Carnavalet (devoted to the history of Paris) and just a bit further to the Place des Vosges, one of the first open square developments in medieval Paris, with an arched arcade and faux brick façade in an otherwise limestone city, because Venetian architecture was all the rage when it was built in 1605 (this is where the climax to Daisy in Exile takes place).
In the other direction from the Saint-Gervais, down rue Vieille-du-Temple toward the river, is the Hôtel de Rohan (Daisy in Exile) and Hôtel Soubise. Le Marais is sick with these magnificent city chateaux, all built in the same era after they learned how to drain the swampland, so a good rule of thumb is to walk in any open carriage door and explore, until someone kicks you out. The whole Marais has become so upscale since we lived there that I’m surprised they let us in anymore.
The best recommendation is to do like Aunt Mill suggests to Daisy. Put away your map or phone app and allow yourself to get lost. Paris is still a city for flâneurs and flâneuses (strollers).
How do you come up with the authentic dialogue and teen speak for Daisy and her friends?
I’m flattered that you think the dialog is authentic. My daughters would often read passages and say, “Dad, nobody our age says that!” They were my language consultants early on. Now they are adults and no longer experts. But I love dialects and always have. I listen and study teen or tween Insta-bloggers, etc., and make scratchpad glossaries of words gleaned from websites.
Sometimes I write dialog in standard English first, so I get the meaning nailed down, then go back and revise and revise again until the words sound close to something authentic. I have in my favor that Daisy’s been out of America for a while and not à jour (current), and that Lucia speaks English as her second or third language, so she’s prone to indulge in slang she doesn’t fully comprehend. Plus, though it isn’t foregrounded, the events of Daisy’s stories take place about a decade ago, so most teens today are already speaking some newer dialect.
Despite being a model who turns heads everywhere she goes, Lucia is not a self-absorbed, nor is she a confident person. What message did you want to send to readers through Lucia’s personality?
Once I realized I needed to get Lucia to Paris so that she and Daisy could work out issues from when Daisy got expelled and join Daisy on her caper, I knew Lucia would come as a newbie model.
Fashion is part of the blood and sinew of Paris. The nomadic tribe of models are treated like celebrities in Paris during fashion week. I know a good deal about the modeling business, including the dark side of the business, from other writing and research, and it helped that my eldest daughter was a model for a time. But I wanted to write about it in a neutral and realistic way.
My biggest help on the details came from Sarah DeAnna, who walked several runway seasons in Paris, and who I interviewed over the phone while she drove to various auditions. An author in her own right, Sarah has terrific stories. She also had, from the beginning, a clear sense of what she was about and I tried to imbue that characteristic into Lucia.
At base, Lucia’s story is a version of the ugly duckling turning into a swan, but I wanted the swan in this case to be very active in her own transformation. And the other part here is Daisy’s recognition of the momentary beauty of a runway show, the fleeting vision of that hyper-theatrical performance, if you will. The girl who hates putting on a dress wants to put one on to go to Felix’s funeral, even though she knows he won’t see it. That’s Daisy growing up.
Besides Daisy, who is your favorite character to write?
Oh, gosh, I really enjoy writing them all. It’s a guilty pleasure writing these books. But I have to say, I love Aunt Mill. She spends a lot of time in a sour, sad mood in Daisy and the Missing Mona Lisa, but she gets Daisy, gets what’s special and fragile about her, and is a wonderful mentor. She also has this secret about her that Daisy is just beginning to discover. Aunt Mill limps like Odysseus after all, and is the only woman ever admitted to the Order of the Cincinnati, and Felix, who didn’t suffer fools, thought the world of her.
I also love writing the dialogs between Sief and Daisy. He obviously has a beginner’s crush on her, and she’ll have nothing to do with that nonsense, but she does admire him and frequently needs him. Plus, he speaks broken English, and she speaks broken French. So they do this common thing where they go back and forth between the two languages, sometimes mid-sentence. These are hard passages to write because it’s easy to lose the reader if you get too deep into these private languages. Lots of tinkering and adjusting involved.
What’s next for Daisy?
Well, she’ll likely stay in Paris. It’s easy for her to get around because of the Metro. That mobility is necessary for her adventures and investigations.
I have about half a dozen potential plots sketched out. Plenty of fun French history to play around with. And Christophe Babinet is still lurking about. But working out Daisy’s incremental growth and self-discovery and meshing it with the plot is the difficult part. She’s not an easy child to raise and she likely has a rough road ahead with Aunt Mill. I fear I’m being a bit vague here. Perhaps a trip to Paris is required to do more research!
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