Louvre Museum for Kids, The

$29.95, Win 95, Win 3.1, Mac OS (CD-ROM)

Teaches: art, history

CTR Review

This is the first program we've seen that effectively introduces works of art in a friendly, child-oriented way. Featured are 150 of the Louvre Museum's interesting paintings and sculptures. From the main menu (pictured), you can read a seven page, narrated book about The Louvre, watch a three minute video of the museum, or access each of the works by scrolling through them, one at a time. For each work of art you can also select a magnifying glass for a closeup look (some of these even let you view the art from different angles). You can take a picture and save it in a photo album, and look in a book to read text that is related. You can also access an linked index, hear a short narrative, see what country the piece comes from, learn about the time period in which it was created, and see how big the piece is, in relation to a person. Children can also access short activities for each piece of art, including connect-the-dots, jigsaw puzzles, finding missing sections, locating small images, and identifying how a piece has been altered. The short activities were somewhat repetitive and superficial. Levels of challenge, and richer activities would have made the experience stronger. In general, however, the program's content and design are great for kids, and we would recommend it as a nice way to introduce children to works of art. Parents and teachers should be aware that the art work was not screened for nudity. Consequently, the magnifying feature makes it easy for kids to get some close-up views of nude sculptures and paintings. Note: this program is available in French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and English.