Maria S. De Salvia BaldiniCritiques

I do like books on art for children. This little book seems very promising at first glance-- it has beautiful drawings of children interacting with art, reproductions of art from various museums in Florence, is pint-sized for fairly young hands (10 and younger) -- but something is missing and I think it is the "playing" part. The paintings are often quite detailed, life-sized canvasses, but the reproductions in the book are too, too small to do them any kind of justice. Also it is all very passive on the child's side. Yes, it's nice to have a few words describing what the painting is about, but it doesn't really involve the child at all. How about asking the child to find certain things in the painting or what he/she notices first about the painting, asking questions that involve the child thinking about what he/she is looking at or asking them to find what they find strange or out of place in the painting. This book had a promising idea and pretty much wasted it.