Friday, August 1, 2008

Art Fraud Detective by Anna Nilsen

I was at the book store yesterday and came across a great book. Anna Nilsen’s Art Fraud Detective is a clever find-the-difference book that allows readers to compare paintings to slightly messed-up fakes.

The pages are split with the fakes on the top and the originals on the bottom. Each original painting appears next to an artist biography. The biographies are written for ages 9-12 but younger children can also enjoy studying the paintings.

Some paintings have not been changed, some have only one change, some have two, three, or four. Each painting that has been replaced with a fake includes a hidden symbol that tells you who created the fake. When you have studied every painting and discovered who created the fakes, you will be able to solve the big mystery: who is the good guy?

The book includes 34 paintings. Many are by artists you have already read about on this blog. Van Eyck, Botticelli, Raphael, da Vinci, Brueghel, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, Monet, Seurat, Rousseau, van Gogh, and Picasso are all featured in Art Fraud Detective.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The art market is a little messed up today. There is a book DALI & I that claims Dali himself was a fraud, there is a movie coming out about it too. There is also a site that focuses on the art fraud of dali, picaaso, chagall, etc. www.art-fraud.org

Jessica said...

Thanks for linking to that site! I will definitely spend some time looking it over. Seems pretty interesting.

The book says that Dali was a fraud? Does it say that someone else created his art or is it commenting on whether the work he produced should be considered art? I would be interested in reading that. Do you remember what the title was?

If you know what the movie will be called, that would be great information to have as well.