1. "Seen Art?" by Jon Scieszka, illustrations by Lane Smith, published by Museum of Modern Art/Viking

The puckish duo behind such beloved books such as "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Stupid Tales" and "Math Curse" take on the art world, with this sly (but who cares because it’s so enjoyable) effort to get kids (or grownups) to consider paintings and sculptures from MoMAs collection. The premise is that our protagonist — who looks like a striped-shirt-sporting egg whose crown is sprouting a few wispy hairs — has lost his friend, Art, in Midtown, which is not a place where kids should be wandering around on their own, even if they’re egg-kids. "Have you seen Art?" he asks and is promptly directed to the museum. In a mischievous riff on P.D. Eastmans classic "Are You My Mother?", little egg-man proceeds to ask an array of museum-goers, "have you seen art?", eliciting some hilarious descriptions of the work of van Gogh, Warhol, Magritte, Duchamp, and others by eccentric, would-be critics. Also, readers will learn why they should not sit on chairs in the design department.

2. "Life Doesn’t Frighten Me" by Maya Angelou, illustrations by Jean-Michel Basquiat, edited by Sarah Jane Boyers, published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

"Shadows on the wall/
Noises down the hall/
Life doesn’t frighten me at all/
Bad dogs barking loud/
Big ghosts in a cloud/
Life doesn’t frighten me at all" — from these opening lines of the Angelou poem that Boyers has paired with Basquiat images for this lovely book, it becomes clear how this union might make sense. For Basquiat as for Angelou, there is not much to be said for "Mean Old Mother Goose" in this clamorous, fearsome world. Sure, it’s a little weird at times, but both Basquiat’s and Angelou’s work can be a little weird. Their respective oddities — paint-splattered-thousand-dollar-suit-wearing versus sappy-self-affirmation-spouting — seem to balance each other out.

3. "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" by E.L. Konigsburg, published by Simon & Schuster

The beginning of this novel is perfect: "Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her back. She didn’t like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere. To a large place, a comfortable place, and indoor place, and preferably a beautiful place. And that’s why she decided upon the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City." This book is the only reason that the decorative antique and furniture rooms at the Met are interesting. After reading about Claudia Kincaids preteen escape to the museum with her younger brother Jamie (the money man) it is impossible to pass by musty Victorian beds and not long to hide away in the bathroom until the place is closed and you can have full command over Egyptian tombs and parading knights. The actual conflict in the plot, involving a mysterious statue from the collection of the enigmatic Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler fades from memory. For a refresher on the finer details, however, one can always turn to the film, for which Ingrid Bergman assumed the title roll, or to the made-for-TV movie, in which another grande dame, Lauren Bacall, plays the part.

4. "Iggy Peck Architect" by Andrea Beaty, illustrations by David Roberts, published by Abrams Books for Young Readers

Iggy Peck can’t be stopped! This precocious boy drives his parents up the wall with his finely engineered creations, including dirty-diaper towers, apple castles, and pancake bridges. None of the adults in this world get that architecture is a noble pursuit (and ultimately probably more financially savvy than being a fireman or ballerina). That is, until on a school trip Iggy must build a suspension bridge from "boots, tree roots and strings, fruit roll-ups and things." This is divinely illustrated, and if it turns your tot onto a life of master-drafting, the next gift for them should be Rizzolis "Modern Architecture Pop-Up Book" by Anton Radevsky and David Sokol, which offers amazing 3-D constructions of buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Saarinen, Frank Gehry, Calatrava, and many more.

5. "Diego" by Jonah and Jeanette Winter, illustrations by Jeanette Winter, published by Random House Children’s Books

Every page of this biography of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera is presented in English and in Spanish. And both Mother Winter and her son, who make up the team behind the book, have written numerous other children’s works as well (Jonah has recently published biographies for young people on Frida Kahlo, Gertrude Stein, and Barack Obama.) "Diego" is charmingly illustrated and might just teach you something about art, or Spanish, or Diego Rivera, without you even noticing.

6. "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

"Once there were three white mice on a white piece of paper," this book begins. How very Kazimir Malevich. Then the mice get hold of three jars of paint: red, blue, and yellow. There’s a cat. The paint gets mixed. The mice learn how to make colors like orange and green and purple... you get the idea. This book's guide to hues is easier to follow than any color wheel.

7. "Linnea in Monet’s Garden" by Cristina Bjork, illustrations by Lena Anderson, translated by Joan Sandin, published by R & S Books

Those flipping through this delightful tale can finish its last page and utter Linnea’s opening lines: "Just think — I’ve been in a famous artist’s garden! And I’ve been in Paris," and all that without ever straying from their Matisse-ian armchairs. Linnea, wearing a wonderful straw hat, travels through the City of Lights and through the sunflowers of Giverny, and in the meantime learns about Monets life and work, as do the readers, who get a chance to admire reproductions of Monet’s paintings, photographs of the artist’s home and family, as well as Anderson’s enchanting illustrations.

8. The "Uncle Andy" Books by James Warhola, published by Putnam Juvenile

Andy Warhol once said that an "artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have," a description that certainly applies to his nephew’s children’s books; but even if you don’t need "Uncle Andy’s A Faabbbulous Visit with Andy Warhol" or "Uncle Andy’s Cats" it’s clear why you might want them. For the first book in the series, Warhola depicts what it was like growing up near Pittsburgh in a house without indoor plumbing behind which his father ran a junkyard. When the young James visits his uncle’s house in Manhattan, he’s certainly in for a change of scene (and a few changes of wig). But the junk he finds in Andy’s Manhattan home is not always unfamiliar. In Warhola’s follow-up, about his uncle’s cats, we get another view of the artist at home, this time coming up with a plot to offload a massive litter of gray kittens — some of Warhol’s infamous Sams.

9. "Action Jackson" by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, illustrations by Robert Andrew Parker, published by Roaring Brook Press

From the team that produced "Chuck Close: Up Close" comes another illustrated biography for children, which follows Pollock over the course of his creation of "Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)." The illustrations, with their playful references to Abstract Expressionism, are beautiful.

10. "Roy Lichtensteins ABC" by Bob Adelman, published by Little, Brown & Company

O is for "The Oval Office!", the artist’s 1992 silkscreen of the Oval Office, that is. This is just one of, let’s see, 26 ingenious image-letter pairings.

11. Max Makes a Million by Maira Kalman, published by Viking Juvenile

Everything Maira Kalman creates is a delight, as evidenced by her recent, spectacular show at the University of Pennsylvanias Institute of Contemporary Art. This book begins, "Call me Max. Max the dreamer. Max the poet. Max the dog. My dream is to live in Paris. To live in Paris and be a poet." That sounds pretty good to us, too. And who can resist adoring Max’s friend, the painter Bruno, who only paints invisible paintings until he falls in love with a pie-flinging physicist and only wants to paint her! Or "The Museum of Incredibly Modern Art," which, incredibly, has the same gridded black Bertoia side chairs in its sculpture garden as another modern New York museum we know and love.