Chasing Degas

Despite the ballet-themed cover, this is really a book about painting. After a dress rehearsal, a young French dancer discovers that Monsieur Edgar Degas has taken her costume bag by mistake, leaving his paints behind. This device allows her to meet Renoir, Monet, Cassatt, and Caillebotte%E2%80%94all colleagues of Degas%E2%80%94as she races across Paris to recover her bag. Montanari (A Very Full Morning) doesn't attempt to duplicate the Impressionist masterpieces her painters are working on, but renders the scenes from which they paint in a smoky, slightly distorted style evocative of the caf%C3%A9s and salons of turn-of-the-century Paris. Her own perceptions add a special dimension; as Renoir tells the girl, "Your hair is a touch of red and brown and, yes, a little bit of green," her hair trails off into lines of paint in those colors. Moving as lightly as a dancer herself, Montanari has written a fine introduction to a place and time that was uniquely congenial to the arts. An afterword provides more information about the painters and their work. Ages 4%E2%80%948. (Oct.)