GUTS

Guts has a lot going for it. In addition to its charmingly pithy title, it's decorated with any number of computer-enhanced Technicolor photographs of innards and bears the predominantly white-on-black design that is Simon’s trademark. It’s also written in standard Simon prose: By now, the author has perfected the art of boiling down the complexities of science into a simple, declarative sequence that, in this case, leads readers from the mouth to the anus. Along the way, they will learn of the dizzying variety of glands and goos that go into the digestive process, as well as the many organs from the epiglottis to the appendix. While the text would almost certainly have been improved by a pronunciation guide (how many child readers will know exactly what to do with “chyme”?) and would definitely have been improved by a bibliography or list of added resources, it does its job as efficiently as its subject does. Simon’s books remain blessedly free of distracting sidebars and other trendy bells and whistles, and that simplicity in itself may be one of the keys to his enduring success. (Nonfiction. 5-12)