Customer Reviews

Art Fraud Detective: Spot the Difference, Solve the Crime!

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a beautiful, unusually instructional and engaging book introducing children (and adults!) to an enormous range of master artworks spanning 500 or so years. It sold out immediately at our school book fair and has been ordered by many members of the faculty and by parents. We couldn't keep the kids away from it! With it's 'game' format including a magnifier, it is lots of fun and fairly challenging. For the holidays, I'm using it as a centerpiece with accompanying art supplies for family gifts. And, what a great price!

This is a very clever book, and well executed. Some of the small changes to the paintings are very clever, and have been very well-done on a computer. You really have to look the whole painting over closely, since the way the mystery is designed, you might not be sure you have all the changes. I had to go back on several and look them over again to make sure I had everything, and it was fun to discover a change I had missed the first time. It is true as another reviewer wrote that the "answer" appears right under the last page of painting, so it would be easy to glance at it. The author made the print small, thinking one would need the magnifying glass to see it, but she should have made it smaller still. I could easily read it naked-eye. The fun part of the book, though, is not so much to identify the good-guy, but to completely find all the changes in the paintings. If you do it right, without cheating, it's a lot of fun.

This is a good book for any age. This book helps you learn how to look at details and requires you to be a detective and you can even use a magnifying glass!!! It is very intersting book because it tells the story behind the pictures. It is really fasanating to see al the picturesand will be appealing for anyone. I gave it five stars not only because it is a good story but also because it is educational. Teachers will love it and students will be begging for the book for weeks. This book will be a very good choice if your are a teacher or even if you are a grownup who just wants to learn mor about the pictures.

My 5 year old daughter absolutely adored this book, we spent 4 hours on one day pretending to be detectives. I like the fact that you make your own chart on a seperate piece of paper to keep track of the bad guys....an added math lesson to the art history. I was occasionally frustrated that the "real" artwork was so small compared to the fake, it was hard on my eyes at times....and also that sometimes the pictures were on diagonal from each other. It was much easier when the "real" and fake pictures were directly in line with each other. (This may not have bothered me if I was looking at the book by myself, but when sharing the book, it was annoying). All in all, this was so much fun and interesting.

I just browsed this book (at the school book fair also). It is a beautiful book, great premise, and really got my attention. One thing I immediately didn't like at all, however, was how easily accessible and visible the answer pages (two facing pages) were at the end of the book. It would have been nice if they had a special cover over them so you couldn't unintentionally see the answers. The book has a relatively small number of pages, and the way they are structured and stapled, the odds of the book just falling open to the answers is pretty high! It happened to me!

And just a quick glance at those pages tells you more than you might want to know. One inadvertent glance and I saw the sentence that told me which of the two paintings were not forged. What a spoiler. The answers naturally include images of the paintings. Ideally each painting's "answer" should also be presented so that you can look at one painting's conclusion without seeing all the others, which is not the case here. It's almost impossible to look at one painting in the answers and not be drawn to another one with its solution only a half inch above, below or to the side.

The search for the forgeries is the heart of the book and the answer section was poorly executed. Editor please take note for future editions. A small attached or pocketed answer booklet with one solution per page would be great. Overall it is a beautiful and interesting book that the owner should be able to enjoy at his or her own pace.

Also, the magnifying glass was stuck in its pouch, probably due to heat from shipping or storage.

This book was a lot of fun for my son and I. Readers are told that four gangs of forgers have replaced most of an art museum's paintings, and only we can help figure out which are real and which are forged. Using a magnifying glass, you compare 8" by 5" four color paintings to 4" by 4" originals, looking for changes (such as missing items or objects with different coloration). This allows you to fill in a chart which allows you to deduce the forgers, the snitch and the unchanged paintings, thereby saving the museum. 34 painintgs are here, by Van Eyck, Piero, Uccello, Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo, Gossaert, Massys, Holbein, Marinus, Brueghel, Avercamp, Brugghen, Rembrandt, Steenwyck, Velde, Hooch, Vermeer, Chardin, Perronneau, Gainsborough, Turner, Constable, Watteau, Os, Delaroche, Ingres, Morisot, Degas, Monet, Rousseau, Seurat, Van Gogh and Picasso. Each painting is accompanied by a couple of paragraphs about the artist and the painting. We both enjoyed finding the mistakes, filling out the chart and solving the puzzle; the game also stimulated a discussion of painting and artists. It took us a few sessions to solve everything, but it was enjoyable time. I would buy other books by this author.

What a way to expose your children to great works and concepts in fine art! My children couldn't put this one down - they even squabbled over whose turn it was to use it!

This book is a great way to familiarize children (and adults) with some of the greatest artists in history. Searching for clues as to whether or not each masterpiece is a fraud causes one to closely study the pieces in great detail. My daughters love looking at the art and doing the detective work. They usually want to go through several pieces each time we pull this book out. I highly recommend it to people of all ages!

It's a mystery in a museum. Wow! If you like art or if you like mysteries or both, this books for you. It comes with a magnifying glass so you can check to see which of the paintings are frauds and which are the real things. There are even thieves to find. It's just a lot of fun. Learn art while having a bit of fun!

I bought up a bunch of puzzle books of all types to keep my mind active after having foot surgery. By far this is my favorite. I have never seen anything quite like it. If you like the games Clue or Masterpiece both of which I do then this is the book for you.

You get to learn the history and facts of very famous works of art. You then become a dectitive and have to figure out which prints are fakes and which are real and who forged them.

It comes with a plastic magnifying glass. You make a chart and head out to find who done it. It is challenging enough for an adult to have fun but I am sure very doable for children too.

Adults don't think these are just for kids. Great for keeping your mind sharp.