2005-09-29 A great way to introduce children to art.

I think this is a wonderful way to introduce children to the paintings of Van Gogh through a gentle story of Van Gogh's time in Camille's town. All the illustrations are in a Van Gogh-esque style and the yellow fields, night sky, house and chair etc appear just in the background illustrations. In addition there are reproductions of some portraits and the famous sunflower painting. The story is quite sad as it reflects the true story where Van Gogh is not accepted by the people of the town, but his unhappiness is relatively implicit so my children (2&4) understand this as teasing rather than anything stronger, and at the end when Van Gogh leaves but they just assume he's off to paint elsewhere. If you wanted to draw out lessons on being different, talk about great masters etc. this is a very good starting point.