Tell me A Picture - Adventures in Looking at Art by Quentin Blake (Frances Lincoln Children's Books)

Pictures and paintings can tell a story without a dot of text or an explanatory paragraph. We know this from our visits to one of our favourite local destinations - the astonishing Ashmolean Museum, which we're lucky enough to have easy access to. Wandering through the amazing gallery in the museum, we often play the same game that the children in Quentin Blake's "Tell me a Picture - Adventures in Looking at Art" do.

Quentin Blake oversaw an exhibition at the National Gallery while serving as the first children's laureate back in 2001. The exhibition gathered together classic and contemporary art from artists and children's book illustrators with the intention of sparking conversation and encouraging exploration of art in a way that really appeals to us. Though Charlotte's more of a science geek, sharing a house with me means that she's been slowly introduced to art most of her young life and hopefully my rather ham-fisted attempts to get her interested in art might rub off on her later on (She's already far better at drawing and painting than I am, not constrained by the daft self-imposed rules some adults cling on to when they start putting pencil to paper).

Quentin's characters explore the gallery of work from wonderful artists like Gaudi, Emma Chichester-Clark and John Burmingham, passing comment on each work in ways that will spark your own children's interest and curiosity.

It's a fantastic idea to revisit Quentin's original project and put it together in a glorious hardback book. If you (like us) love all things arty, and love encouraging your children to follow the same path then this is definitely not to be missed.

Charlotte's best bit: Fascinating X-Ray work on a painting to reveal a hidden painting underneath

Daddy's Favourite bit: A truly awesome collection of art from some of our favourite artists, wrapped up in a book that just begs to be explored

(Kindly sent to us for review by Frances Lincoln Children's Books)