Katie Art Books by James Mayhew: A Book Series Review

I’m pretty biased towards children’s books that are art themed. So it’s no surprise that James Mayhew’s Katie series is one of my personal favorites. I enjoyed collecting them (hehe) and now I’m enjoying reading them out loud to my boys.

Katie Art Books by James Mayhew

The series follows a little girl called Katie as she explores the world of art by going in and out of various paintings. There are currently 13 titles in the series (though not all are about art.)

A Great Introduction to Art

The Katie books are a great way to introduce your children to famous artists and their paintings. Each book incorporates around 5 paintings into the storyline and the paintings are all of either a particular artist or a specific art style.

Katie and the Mona Lisa for example introduces kids to Renaissance Art. Meanwhile, Katie and the Spanish Princess features the great Spanish Masters such as Goya and Velasquez. Then there’s Katie and the Starry Night, which features paintings by only a single artist, Vincent Van Gogh.

Makes “Picture Study” More Interesting

I try to make it a point to incorporate a lot of art into our homeschool lessons because I believe that it’s important to expose children to all things that are beautiful in this world (and that includes beautiful art!)

So Luke and I have “Picture Study” wherein we look and discuss about a painting. (Related post: Van Gogh for Little Kids) The Katie books have been very helpful in making the paintings even more interesting!

As Katie goes on to have adventure after adventure inside the different paintings, the reader is invited to explore the details. And as you do, you are unknowingly familiarizing yourself with the different works of art.

Read “Katie and the Sunflowers” for example, and tell me you don’t see Katie getting into trouble in a cafe in France the next time you see Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night!

I also love how the different characters in the paintings take on personalities and interacts with Katie! In “Katie and the Spanish Princess”, Katie plays with Margarita, the little princess in Velasquez’ masterpiece, Las Meninas. The next time your kids see the painting, they’ll probably remember the story of little Margarita!

Overall:

As I said, I love these books and love how they were able to help familiarize Luke with many great artists and their works. The illustrations on the book are beautiful but more importantly, the stories are engaging.

Because I’m a huge fan of Van Gogh and Monet, my favorites from the series are “Katie and the Starry Night” and “Katie and the Waterlily Pond” but you can’t go wrong with any of the books from the set. I have collected all of James Mayhew’s art-themed Katie books and love them all!

I highly recommend getting the whole series.

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