The orign of the project
In 2019, Culture & Adventure took over 500 people inside the Louvre for a guide tour. We noticed that families with children aged 6 to 12 were asking for more interactivity during their visits without adding screen times to their kids day.
Our clients asked us for a book that was “not too long”, “very resistant but still nice looking”, and “with lots of games”, which makes their children want to stay in the museum for more than 10 minutes! Oh and something that could be used both at home and in the museum.
We couldn’t find it so Pascaline wrote it! ! 
The book allows you to discover the “secret corners” of the Louvre through 20 masterpieces of the Louvre. It is the opportunity to make a journey through Time! From Mesopotamia to our own time, passing through the Greco-Roman period, the Italian Renaissance and the French paintings of the nineteenth century.
The choice of the characters
Our book “Quatre petits curieux at the Louvre” features 4 children:
Serena, a black American kid from Chicago
Hicham, a young Parisian kid with Morrocan origins.
Jaimie, a little red hair from Manchester, England
Aiko a little japaneese girl from Tokyo.
They are from all over the world, they’ve had different upbringing and they like different things. Now, if you might wonder why did we bother! Well…We think Culture has been represented as white for way too long, it is a shame and it needs to change! The world is not white and neither are our visitors. Well, yes, they are but not only…So we created characters children couldd identify with.
How we selected the artworks
We have selected works of art allowing the children to discover the most unusual corners of the museum as well as the “stars”. For each work of art Pascaline wrote short historical topos, anecdotes, games and Sébastien Vanhoute, the illustrator on this book did beautiful illustrations.
In short, everything you need to understand the works of the Louvre while having fun.We chose most diverse and varied objects we could think of to keep your kids interested. During the tour, children will discover statues like winged Victory of Samothrace, the Vénus de Milo, paintings by italian masters Raphaël, Da Vinci, Véronese or Delacroix. They will also get to see the crown jewels. The Louvre is home to several kings and emperess crowns and tiara. It they venture far enough they will also see “Joyeuse”, a beautiful sword sword and one of Napoleon Bonapart’s throne !
The themes
Our book mentions several themes because the goal of our book is to take your kids to all 4 corners of the museum. The art works allow us to talk about the Middle Ages and knights in shining armours, brave and strong women, religion, nature, war, injustice, anger, love, fashion and power.
Talking about sad topics to children
A ffew paintings we talk about have very sad topics like the Raft of the Medusa where you can see a ship sinking and people starving to Death…Depending on your kids personality they might react differently. Therefore we’ve thought of several games to de-escalate the drama….
Games & activities included in our book
We’ve included a dozen games and activities in our book. They can either be done during your visit to the Louvre or at home.
The goal is to let your kids express their creativity and their artistic side! You might be surprised by what they see in a painting and how they’ve portrayed their emotions. It is great fun.
There are 20 drawings needing colouring, memory games, charades and word games like “find the hidden word”, everything they need to learn new things while having fun.
The making of this book
This book was made and printed in France. It was designed with children aged 6 to 12 in mind so we chose a binding which can survive being used by little monsters, not famous for being gentle…
The book is the size of an A5 piece of paper, we think it is a gret format for kids to use and it is easy to store at home if they want to keep it with their other books.
Our book was printed on recycled paper to reduce our impact expect from the book cover which need to be glossy and waterproof so the book can be wiped if chocolate and various crumps happen to fall on it, as it is often the case with children!
We hope this post about our activity book “Quatre petits curieux at the Louvre ” will give you Wanderlust and that one day, we might take you and your little monsters on a tour of the Louvre!
In the meantime, this book can be used to introduce your children to the Louvre artwork! You can buy a copy on our e-shop.
