Project images of the paintings featured in the novel (available on Laura Marx Fitzgerald’s website ) for students to observe and discuss. Sewell’s messages in the gallery paintings. Without developing her visual literacy skills, Martha might not have been able to decipher Mrs. The Gallery lends itself superbly for use in humanities and history classes, as well as for readers who simply enjoy puzzles, mysteries, and fine art. An author’s note answers questions for readers wanting to know more about the paintings, the 1920s, and the real-life inspiration for the mystery. Perhaps more compelling, though, are the narratives she entwines around the paintings themselves, all of which are in actual existence. With The Gallery, author Laura Marx Fitzgerald offers a mystery that will delight fans of Chasing Vermeer, The Westing Game, and even Jane Eyre. Fitzgerald deftly weaves notable newsworthy events of the era into the plot and setting, building a rich historical context around the characters. Sewell sends down to hang in the gallery are actually hidden cries for help.

It doesn’t take long for Martha to suspect foul play and devise a rescue, especially once she surmises that the few valuable paintings Mrs. Sewell, Martha is continuously told, must never deviate from specific routines or leave her room, where she keeps a priceless art collection. Sewell, as she joins her mother as a servant at the gilded Sewell mansion. Archer Sewell-has “gone mad.” Being somewhat cheeky herself, twelve-year old Martha can’t help but become fascinated with the mysteriously cloistered Mrs. And then-” But there’s no need for Martha’s mother to finish the sentence because all of 1920s New York City’s high society knows that Rose Pritchard-now Rose Sewell, wife of newspaper mogul J. It’s said that what happened to the once vibrant, brazen heiress “Wild Rose” Pritchard is “What happens to most girls. Published by Dial Books for Young Readers, 2016

The gallery by laura marx fitzgerald