THE BRILLIANT BRAIN
How It Works and How To Look After It
by Roopa Farooki ; illustrated by Viola Wang
An elementary guide to our most complicated organ and its functions.
Nurture (experience) beats nature (genetics) in this colorful anatomical overview. Along with providing fanciful schematic portraits of the lumpy organ itself, Wang unleashes a diverse set of children energetically playing or posing amid abundant sprays of tiny images meant to represent “the thrilling thoughts” and “magical memories…that make you YOU.” Still, if Farooki is not as entertaining as the drooling zombie tour guide of Stacy McAnulty’s Brains! (2021), her experience as a medical doctor brings some authority to her pithy descriptions of what each major brain part does, from cerebellum and hippocampus to limbic system, as well as to her general advice about keeping brains properly fed, rested, protected, and stimulated. Readers interested in more advanced topics, such as brain disorders or differences, or in getting past what nerves do, to some explanation of how they actually do it, will have to look elsewhere. Still, the author does occasionally go beyond simple functions to touch on more complicated processes, such as how brains multitask, where researchers have shown feelings are generated in the brain (except for shyness, which seems to be a puzzler), and the differences between long- and short-term memory.
Positive and energetic, if just a quick slice of the basics.
(Informational picture book. 6-8)