Customer Reviews

Touch the Art: Brush Mona Lisa's Hair

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We love this book! Brush Mona Lisa's hair has works of art that remind me of an art history class I took in college, but with touch and feel! My daughters (3 yrs old and 18 months old) love books so we have alot of them, and this one is a winner!
This book includes:
Mona Lisa- Leonardo Da Vinci
Price Balthasar Carlos on Horseback- Diego Velazquez
The Birth of Venus- Sandro Botticelli
The Laughing Cavalier- Frans Hals
The Arnolfini Portrait- Jan van Eyck
Portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza and Their Triumph- Piero della Francesca
Girl with a Peal Earring- Johannes Vermeer
The Card Sharp- Georges de la Tour
Sistine Madonna- Raphael
At the end of the book the authors have included a short paragraph about each work of art and the artist who created it.
As with all the books in this series, the art is the star of the book- the words are secondary, and that's fine in this case. The "story line" in this book isn't amazing, and while that would usually annoy me, it doesn't matter much since the touch and feel famous works of art concept is so fantastic! Its a book I love looking at as well as my kids!

I was so excited to get this book. What a fantastic idea - teaching kids about great art from a young age. The selections were good, the textures (Mona Lisa's hair, the trim on the coat of van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait) are appealing. I appreciated the factual blurb with dates, artist information, etc - great for the adult reader. BUT, the actual text is SO uninspired and flat. I love the cadence of Dr. Suess and Shel Silverstein and love reading them over and over. Julie Appel's text is awkward and boring. After reading it once, I find I pass it by more often than not. I hope someone takes this general idea and makes a more interesting version.

A lovely book from a lovely series of four--my favorites are this one and "Make Van Gogh's Bed." If you are an art lover and want your child to share your enjoyment, this is a great way to pass on some culture in a fun and low-pressure way. They will recognize the art works just because they have seen them in a book, and you will enjoy reading these books again and again. Wish there were more.

My three year old loves this and the other books by this author.
This is the book she wants to read and interact with.

The books are great and the colors and layout very appealing to children.

Highly recommedned.

For your visual and verbal young learners, this book introduces great art from masters of the Renaissance to the Barogue in a fun, interactive way. Each page has a "touch and feel" component which engages readers and helps imprint art into the mind. This wonderful book also has a great anecdotal section at the end for curious readers who would like to know more about each artist and their featured work.

I bought this for my nephew as a baby shower gift along with a few other ones in the Touch the Art series-- This one is by far his favorite! He loves to feel Mona Lisa's hair on the front and is constantly carrying it around with him- GREAT idea for books and kids to get familiar with art at a young age-

A wonderful addition to the home school library. Great way to expand the childs experience. Highly recommend A+++

We have Pop Warhol's Top and Make Van Gogh's Bed. I didn't even check the reviews on Mona Lisa because we really enjoyed the other books by the same author. The wording is very strange. There is no rhyming, which is what my daughter really enjoys in the other two books mentioned above. This one just asks questions about where to find things on the page. Also, one of the pages refers to a man's moustache in a painting then asks, "Do you have a moustache?" This strikes me as VERY ODD considering the books appears to be geared towards girls.

This was a big disappointment and I am really considering returning it.

I almost sent this to a friend as a gift too! Yikes. Not good

Every time my child picks up this book, I wince. I bought this book, as well as the rest in the series and a handful of other children's art books, because I wanted to imbue my child with a fascination with art and to introduce him to the classics early in his life. The series is a great concept which just falls short, most noticeably in this particular book. It's really the halting, disoriented text. For instance, on the second page is Diego Velazquez's Prince Balthasar Carlos on Horseback. The text reads, "There's a boy in a new blue suit high up on a saddle. Tickle the horse's tail. Hope it doesn't run away!" What's the problem? The child isn't wearing a blue suit, he's wearing a gold suit. The only thing blue in this painting is the sky. Again, on the last page is two daydreaming cherubs from a portion of Raphael's Sistine Madonna. It reads, "...Can you blow on their pink feathers?" The cherubs wings are a scarlet red. Why I rate this book so low, is because every time we read this book, I spend more time correcting, clarifying and apologizing for the text than enjoying it. It's as though somebody for whom English is a second language wrote this book. And this is just one instance, really in the whole series, where there's just no cadence or fun to the text. It shouldn't be a real problem. But each sentence seems totally random, out of sync, and puzzling. Opposite Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, it says, "See the girl with the shiny earring. Polish her smooth round pearl. Can you tug your ear?" The sentences almost don't seem related. Beside Frans Hals The Laughing Cavalier, it reads, "Where is the man with the wide mustache?" Well, this is a portrait. You can't even respond, "He's right next to the lamp!" because there is nothing in this picture except a smiling man and a gray backdrop. The book opens with small text in the corner, "Look inside and take a peek. Let's play a game of find and seek." Well, we're already inside the book because we've opened it to the first page--and the theme of "find and seek" isn't extended past this sentence. There's no, "Can you find this hidden object?" a page or two on.
That's not to say my child doesn't enjoy this book, however. And, really, I bought it for him so he could leaf through the pictures, which he is quite able to do. As one reviewer commented, I look forward to somebody else furthering this idea in another book. But I felt like this book throughly deserved a parent's disgruntled critique.

I ordered these books for my niece and nephew based on online descriptions only. I had hoped for truly interactive books, based on titles like "Brush Mona Lisa's Hair". Imagine, a full head of hair on Mona Lisa, with a little brush attached. Hours of fun for a little girl. Instead, there's a tiny little window in which the hair can be felt, though no chance of brushing it. Same goes for the other titles. Mediocre pop-up books, at best. Great concept, poor execution.