FIRST DISCOVERY ART SERIES: Created by Claude Delafosse and Gallimard Jeunesse, Illustrated by Tony Ross, Portraits 1 85103 198 7. Animals 1 85103 201 0. Landscapes 1 85103 199 5. Paintings 1 85103 200 2, Moonlight Publishing Pounds 6.99 each

ART AND ARTISTS SERIES: Ancient Art. By Jillian Powell 0 7502 0973 9. Renaissance Art. By Nathaniel Harris 0 7502 0974 7, Wayland Pounds 9.99 each

FAMOUS ARTISTS SERIES: By Antony Mason, Monet 0 7496 1546 X., Picasso 0 7496 1822 1, Watts Pounds 8.50 each

Some overlays help to show how artists do it: Arcimboldo turns a fruit bowl into a face, Dali puts a face on a room, Monet adds a few finishing touches, Magritte paints a painting of a painting in a painting. This technique also helps us to concentrate on detail, seeing, for example, the tiny figures on the distant bridge in a Van Eyck. Elsewhere, opportunities are perhaps missed: why not use an overlay to show Rouen Cathedral through the day with Monet, rather than juxtaposing two pictures by Sisley or wasting the spread on Christo? Each of these sturdy little books is in full colour. Tony Ross adds humorous touches.

Yet some of the visual ideas may not survive repeated looking at home, and there is very little text, as well as a rather arbitrary selection of related paintings reproduced too small at the back. So, probably these are good books for the library as an unusual introduction, to excite interest at key stages 1 and 2 (some of the ideas are quite complicated). The pages are washable, so you can use them near the paint pots.

Wayland’s Art and Artists series is rather variable in quality. Ancient Art in particular has its share of oddities: 19th-century North American masks are not pre-Columbian; some other dates are shaky; Sri Lanka is not usually in Central Asia.

The impression is of a collision between a picture library and a rather separate text. Why have a double spread on Stonehenge yet again, when you can’t do justice to much less familiar art from elsewhere? Who is actually going to find it useful to have comments on the Greek archaic style, Jomon Japan, assorted Roman images and three bits of Celtic art (one of which isn’t), plus a Hindu temple and the Terracotta Army, all tossed up in a somewhat indigestible stir-fry, with added Assyrians and Aztecs?

Renaissance Art is an easier brief and better constructed: the pictures are more integrated in the text and are used to make comparisons. But, as in so many children’s art books, less would be more: more attention to individual works of art in detail (as in the best art gallery education), rather than an attempt to cover everything thinly. One spread not only has two images and some text but also breathless boxes on Flemish painting, bronze-casting and women artists.

First Discovery deals with the same Van Eyck more interestingly by saying virtually nothing, but making us look harder. The Art and Artists series was presumably conceived when the art curriculum was thought to involve “knowing” about dead Italians or Frenchmen and safely dead cultures worldwide.

In their Famous Artists series, Watts clearly understand what’s needed for older key stage 2 and early key stage 3. They even take the trouble to explain how each spread is going to be organised, with relevant biography, decently reproduced paintings, some details and, unusually, a scale for every image (especially important for “Guernica”).

Each spread also gives practical suggestions inspired by the artist’s work: painting in one colour, body proportions, collage, moods, painting water or smoke, and so on.

Antony Mason has also watched language levels carefully and provides a useful glossary. At Pounds 8.50 each these are cheaper than the Eyewitness Art seres (which now includes Monet) and much better value than the Wayland series at Pounds 9.99. At key stages 1-3, themes or artists are arguably a better way of motivating children and teachers than art-historical periods.

There still seems to be a gulf between, on the one hand, the intentions of the curriculum and the insights and best practice of critical studies in art education and, on the other, what most commercial publishers are prepared to do.

John Reeve is head of education at the British Museum