STUFF YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN BODY

The human body gets a visually appealing tour.

Each section of this colorful exploration of human anatomy and physiology begins with a simple question: “How do you move?” and “How do muscles work?” are typical. Detailed, numbered steps are arranged around the large pages, often connected by fine, blue directional lines. Each double-page spread—four augmented with double gatefolds—describes a body system, organ, or process, all of them represented as factory scenes with myriad little workers of various races scampering around fixing, building, or operating fancifully depicted juvenile bodies. The pages are very busy and amusing to pore over. The narrative tends toward complexity, with a challenging vocabulary and granular level of detail. For example, the lateral genticulate nucleus and superior colliculus are both named and explained. Yet on another page urine is described as “pee.” Although sometimes simplistic, the narrative is nearly always accurate, with the exception of one statement that there are valves at the bottom of the heart’s ventricles (although they are depicted correctly in an illustration and described correctly in a different paragraph on the same page). Like David Macaulay’s The Way We Work (2008), this body tour has illustrations that will charm a younger audience than would enjoy the complexity of the written information. For that younger group, Tanya Lloyd Kyi and Ross Kinnaird’s 50 Body Questions (2014) offers a more balanced presentation.

An attractive, detailed exploration for an uncertain audience.