Mark Mulcahy, age 12, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, for his question:

What exactly is the Book of Kells?

Any page of graceful handwriting is beautiful to behold. In the Middle Ages, people went to great lengths to add extra beauty to their manuscripts. Capital letters were colored and gilded with delicate scrolls and delightful hours were spent adorning the borders with intricate paintings. These decorated pages are called illuminated manuscripts and many of them are carefully preserved as museum treasures. Most experts claim that the most beautiful of them all is the Book of Kells that reposes in the library of Trinity –College of Dublin.

This most beautiful of all books was done by artistic scribes at the monastery of Kells in Ireland. It is an exquisitely adorned manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament on pages that measure nine by thirteen inches. The penmanship alone is a work of art. Some of the gilded and ornamented initial letters fill a whole page and the delicate, colorful pictures throughout the manuscript are beyond compare. The Book of Kells was created page by patient page through the 8th and 9th centuries.