wordpress question

Hi there i have a very basic question and probably cant see the woods for the trees. anyway......

Making a site and want the front page to have 4 categories with pictures, a bit of writing (say running books, so a picture of a load of books and some writing saying "check out our book selection") In wordpress what is the easiest way to do this?

So far ive tried just adding an image and some writing, but if they are left aligned then the writing doesnt stay spaced for the next picture down.

Ive tried alternating the alignment, but they look all squashed and again the text doesnt stay with the picture it should be near

Ive looked at easy content units, but you can only use the merchants there, and ive noticed there is more selection in amazon if i go to their site rather than via ECU

Ive tried adding images as a gallery, this would be ideal but it doesnt seem to let you link to another page on your site?? I assumed if you change the link url in the gallery settings then the url that you put in would be the one it links to, but this does not seem to be the case

Any suggestions? plug ins? or am i going the wrong way about this totally??

Regards

Alan

 

Using a template that is designed to display in this manner.