Art Safari: Wanna turn your kids into art critics? Then this site, put together by New York's Museum of Modern Art, is where you should point the young ones toward. It's a stimulating "adventure in looking" that turns children aged between five and 12 on to the wonders of famous paintings and sculptures. Kids are invited to view a painting or sculpture of their choice and "write a story about what you see". They can also make their own art and have it exhibited at the Visitor's Art Display. It's a splendid idea, conceived and carried out brilliantly. But you'll have to do a Shockwave download to enjoy total interactivity.

CNNSI.com : It may not be the ultimate stops for sports news, but this CNN-owned portal is about as comprehensive as they come. There may be a bias towards US sports news, but generally you get updates on major international sports events and profiles of news-making stars. There's a frame on the left that lets you choose the (US or World) sports of your choice, while the home page offers headlines and summaries of current events. The pictures are great as well though if you've ever seen a copy of the print edition of the magazine, you'd be somewhat unsatiated because of the obvious limitations of the online edition.

Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics: If you're the kind of person who often thinks in figures and has an electronic calculator for a brain, you'll love this site that claims to be "the Web's most extensive mathematics resource". There's a search index that lists topics ranging from 'Algebra' to 'Topology', and sections like 'FAQs' and 'What's New' enlighten and update you on all kinds of math matters. It's all pretty comprehensive -- under 'Algebra' alone, there are more than a dozen listings -- so if you're going to be scratching your head over such tricky topics as 'Cyclotomy' and 'Elliptic Curves', you'd better stick to basic geometry. The site is easy-loading and has an eye-pleasing design.

Kinetosaurs: Yes, yet another site for kids. But the fact is, it's the home pages created with children in mind that are among the coolest places to hang out on the Web. This one, put together by artist John Payne, offers animated dinosaur sculptures called Kinetosaurs. These are real fab creations which will have most kids under 10 amused and thrilled for hours. You not only get to see the cute moving creatures but also get a chance to see how they are created. And if you're patient enough, you can even learn how to make your own dinosaurs. The site will take a while to load if you have a bad connection but its design is at once austere and attractive.

Literary Traveler: Aiming to "explore the world of your literary imagination", this is an excellent resource for writers and those who love stories about them. It has some great reminiscences about elusive literary figures, like 'An Encounter with William Stafford' where David Feela evocatively recalls his first meeting with the prolific poet, and 'Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Life'. Features like 'Home in the South', about the roots connection of such writers from the American South as Thomas Wolfe, Carl Sandburg and Kate Chopin, and 'Hemingway's Places', "an effort to celebrate some of the places that we associate with Ernest Hemingway", boast some terrific writing. The home page is mainly text-based so loading time is pretty good.

The Moonlit Road: Here's a storehouse of "ghost stories and strange folktales of the American South, told by the region's most celebrated storytellers". There're some really spooky tales here, and you can have them either as text or streaming audio, though the latter takes a while to download. The first "door" you should open is 'Feature Stories' which has all the current yarns, while 'Archives' contains the previous months' offerings. There's also a 'Bookshop' you can pop into in case you want bound editions of ghost stories. A lot of thought has gone into the look and feel of the page so it conveys the tone of its trade pretty faithfully.

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