This book is excellent, but the kindle version is flawed. The author tells her readers that she is presenting a selection of the world's art masterpieces for the enjoyment and education of children. She introduces her book with a history of art. This history includes some quaint ideas such as that some art pieces reveal that men in some ancient cultures wore their beards in bags, covering them as they cover their body with clothes. She also describes art in different cultures. In her description of art in the US, for example, we read of paintings that were done by a group of artists, each focusing on a different part of the painting, such as one on sky and others on landscape, water, people, animals, and the like. She also reveals how some portrait artists did not disclose the truth about the subject being painted. She feels that there are over 1,000 pictures that young people should know "since he can hardly know too much of a good thing." But because of space requirements she could only include 48.
She wrote a separate introduction describing the life and events of every artist whose pictures she intends to show. These introductions are very well written, informative, and interesting, and read almost like short novels. For example, she tells about one great painter who had a shrewish wife who constantly harassed him, who hated his paintings, stopped him from becoming a still better painter, and turned him into a thief and a forger of other great painter's paintings. When he was dying of fever, she stayed away from him; afraid she would catch his illness. So he died alone. But later, in her old age, when admirers looked at her husband's painting, she would approach them and say, do you know who is the woman in the painting, it's me.
Then she describes the pictures she intends to show. But then the flaw appears. The kindle edition does not have the pictures. This book deserves 4 or 5 stars, but because of the flaw, I gave it just 3. I would recommend this book in paper format, if it contains the pictures. It would then be a good book for teen-agers and above, including adults.