We were sent a selection of Happy Museum books to have a look at and I must admit, being a keen art gallery and museum goer I was really thrilled. These books are in an idea small format which fits into a bag easily meaning that you can take it to have a look at on journey to your art gallery.
The value of these books is that they present the art in such a child friendly manner. Its quite hard to find kid friendly art books these are nicely divided into sections with big bold headers and activities to follow. My children really enjoyed looking through them and discussing the art. I’ve found them a great source of inspiration for slightly more unusual activities. For example, in the Little Chagall the children are asked to draw one of their dreams and illustrate a poem. I must admit I hadn’t considered doing these with children before.
Finding a way to make children engage and enjoy fine art can be a challenge. I tend to find that the huge volumes produced by art galleries can be a bit overwhelming, so to have some little books which cherry pick specific painting and then offer information and inspiration in a child friendly way is like finding gold dust.
Clearly exceptionally well researched these little books are a perfect introduction to art for children and could quite happily form the basis of a holiday programme of activities which you could do with your child. I cant quite believe that I haven’t actually come across them before. They are taking pride of place in the activity section of my bookcase because they are full of ideas to use and utilise when considering art with children.
I’ll be honest, I also learnt quite a lot about the artists and their paintings from these little books as the facts are so easily digestible. I’m now on the lookout for more!
We looked at:
The Little Chagall
The Little Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
The Little Renoir
Disclaimer: We were sent these copies for review purposes
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