Human Body: An Interactive Guide to the Inner Workings of the Body (Discoverology)
Grade 5–9—This eye-catching interactive journey into the human body features spinning wheels, flaps, foldouts, diagrams, electron-microscope photos, X-ray images, and more. The fact-filled text printed in white on solid black backgrounds incorporates an introductory paragraph on each topic, a multitude of captions for the many illustrations, and "Facts" boxes to present snippets to absorb while pulling those tabs and spinning those wheels. Topics covered include the expected and requested: respiration, digestion, muscles, hormones, reproduction, etc. The latter simply sports a wheel showing stages in fetal development, a prenatal ultrasound scan, a pair of diagrams of male and female reproductive organs, and an electron microscope photo of an egg surrounded by sperm. (The section on hormones is equally discreet.) The information covered is in keeping with what kids request for reports, and in sound bites brief enough to keep attention spans in focus (if it weren't for the distraction of those pop-ups and pull tabs). The paper engineering is attractive but fragile, some of the tabs will be torn off in a trice, and the binding is ultra-delicate—but oh, the fun of lifting off the layers of the brain!—Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NYCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.