William & the Missing Masterpiece

K-Gr 2—Inspired by her own pet, Hancocks here presents Parisian William, a black and white "cat of mystery," who is called by a museum when their most famous painting, the Mona Cheesa, is stolen during National Cheese Week. Putting together clues, like a hole in the baseboard and a strand of red yarn, William deduces that the lanky stranger who submitted a mustached Mona Cheesa in the art contest (with a prize of a year's worth of cheese) is actually a tower of mice in a trench coat. The thieves escape punishment but William is lauded, then enjoys a poolside martini. Hancocks's folk style art blends child humor and puns in her visual humor. William on his green moped and his view from behind a newspaper with eyeholes will tickle young funny bones while adults will appreciate the museum's collection of classic paintings transformed by additions of cheese (melting Swiss for Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory) or transformation (Edvard Munch's The Scream features a cat.)