Did you ever wonder the right way to introduce your little angel to the greatest of masters of all times, Leonardo Da Vinci, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, to name a select few. Or, the right time. Well, how about right here and right now.
A couple of months ago, I was browsing the aisles of one of my favorite places, the local public library, with one of my favorite persons, my four-year old daughter, when we struck the mother lode. We were playing our usual game of her running to a shelf and picking out a book at random, and me reading it to her. A few books later, just when I was about to call it a day, she excitedly ran over to me with a book, the cover of which was as brilliantly hued as the midday sun. The title of the book read Camille and the Sunflowers: a story about Vincent van Gogh by Laurence Anholt.
In this true story, the great painter is described through the eyes of a young boy, Camille, whom he befriends while living for a short while in Camille's village. Although a sad tale, where van Gogh is subjected to taunts and ridicule by the villagers for being different (a constantly recurring theme the world over) and Camille's lack of understanding for this animalistic behavior, at the end the message that comes through is one of tolerance, empathy, compassion. And along the way the reader is exposed to the haunting beauty of some of van Gogh's masterpieces.
A quick search through the library databases and we now had four more Laurence Anholt books about great masters at our fingertips. Leonardo and the Flying Boy, The Magical Garden of Claude Monet, Degas and the Little Dancer, and Picasso and the Girl with a Ponytail. Plus, a host of other extremely interesting books.
Our literary pursuits were very well rewarded last weekend, when at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, both my daughters were excitedly running among the exhibits trying to locate a Monet or a Degas, which, I'm happy to inform, they did. Art, any one?
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