Rating: - Inspirational
Can dressing up be art? How Do you paint feelings? Can you paint a noise? This book stimulates children's own creativity and imagination by getting them to question why artists do the things they do. It contains about 30 reproductions of paintings and art work from a mix of genres and explains what they are about and how they were created as well as giving detail on the artists lives. After we bought this we took our son to The National Gallery to see many of the works for real and having already had a basic introduction through this book he was utterly fasicnated. Adults can learn from this too and I would buy it for any child from 5+ What is so lovely about this book is the fact that you can read it on so many differnent levels. There is a second book just out and I'm sure Santa will be delivering it to this household at Christmas.

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Rating: - The Art Book for Children
This book is fantastic. Not only is it a great introduction to some of the most famous works of art in the world but it is also a lot of fun. It inspires imagination and helps children (and adults) to think about what they are looking at and what their interpretation is. I will be interested to see how my 6 year old's perception changes as she gets older. It makes a great change to the usual bedtime storytelling and is well worth buying!

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Rating: - Winner of the English 4-11 Key Stage 2 Non-Fiction Award
This large, well-organised book introduces older primary children, through excellent reproductions, to the work of thirty artists, including painters, sculptors, photographers and engravers. It also supports young readers in an active search of the works for understanding about colour, form, texture and pattern. Gentle, insightful questioning helps children explore how artists communicate ideas, meanings and feelings. One theme that runs through the book is - what counts as art?

Gilbert and George (who apparently do everything together) are artists, but as they form their own 'living sculptures' they are also the subject of the art they create. Does dressing-up count as art? Cindy Sherman is the subject of all her photographic portraits, each one showing her in a different set of clothes and a different wig.

There is just the right amount of writing about each artist and it has a welcome speculative tone. So we read about the painting called 'Spring' that 'no-one knows exactly what Botticelli was trying to tell us when he put these figures together.' There are also activities to try out. For example, children can take up the abstract artist Joan Miro's idea of drawing simple shapes like a woman, a star, or a triangle, while wearing a blindfold. This book would be an excellent resource in the school, but is also something for parents to share with their children or for children to read independently.