Gold Stars Journey Around and Inside Your Amazing Body is a fantastic educational but fun book. I think a book like this is beneficial to my Sensory Seeker as it helps him make sense of his World, and of his self. It is very visual with lots of facts, puzzles and things to do throughout. There are bite-sized points to remember, fun facts, and quizzes to help consolidate the information. The book is really well structured and has a clear contents, glossary and answer page.
Your Amazing Body – The Contents
The book contains everything you child could want to know about the body. The boys really liked the humorous touches such as the quiz on farts – Do boys fart more than girls? We read the book on a long train journey and it was nice to see that the book catered for all 3 of my youngest boys (ages 5, 7 and 11). We explored the body map and they were all able to point to where the different parts of the body were on their own bodies. When we moved onto the more complex nature of cells my 11 year old was able to expand on the information and tell his younger brothers what he had learnt about cells at school. It was great to hear him relay the information, and consolidate it, as well as building his confidence.
Your Amazing Body – Helping with Health
My Sensory Seeker has little awareness as to why he should eat properly, keep clean, cut his nails, etc, and so I feel that this book really helped with this. Again through colourful cartoon-type images I think it explained this. It started with different types of foods needed, and why; how to have a healthy dinner; the digestive system; the teeth; when food goes wrong; and how the food comes out of the body. There is later a section on hair and nails.
Your Amazing Body – Senses
The section on the nose then had a smell experiment. This may be useful to those sensory avoiders to help build up tolerances to smell, or fulfil the diet of the sensory seeker. This could also help determine which smells the child does and does not like. Tasty talks about the five different tastes picked up the taste buds (sour, salt, bitter and umami/savoury) – again this could be really helpful in determining which foods your child will and will not tolerate. Also I think the section on touch would be really useful to discuss any sensory issues.
My Verdict
The Journey Around and Inside Your Amazing Body is a fantastic book for introducing your children to their biology. There is a lot of information presented in a fun, appealing and interactive way, perfect for engaging children. I think it can be accessed by children of a variety of ages, abilities and would make a lasting resource. With plenty of opportunities to write and draw it was also very useful for fine motor development.
The only criticisms are that the page on the heart talks of the left and right side of the heart but the right side is on the page on the left, and vice a versa. As it is a Gold Stars book there was the assumption that there would have been Gold Star stickers which would have been nice.
Parragon Books Ltd RRP £7.99
That seems like a very basic mistake to put the left and right sides of the heart on the opposite pages but otherwise I agree, it does seem like a great book to introduce kids to their bodies.
It’s always helpful to have books like this as anything to do with the body is hard to describe and discuss with children. It does seem strange though about the lack of gold stars in a ‘Gold Stars’ book.
I think with the heart diagram all they needed to have done is said hold the book up against your chest – because then it’s spot on. You always draw the heart like that – I had to learn it that way for A Level Biology. Nice to see something more substantial from the Gold Stars range too.
Kids love books with a little bit of humour that they can relate to. I don’t know a boy (or a man for that matter) that doesn’t like to talk about farts. Seems like quite an engaging read!
My youngest is learning about the human body at the moment. I must look it up for him. I was just going to say what Kate said!
That looks like a great book for kids, and Ideal for my little one as she is currently learning all about the body at school.
What a lovely book – I’m sure D (4.5) would really be interested in finding out all of the information within it.
My son loves factual books like this and enjoys telling us about the facts he has learnt. Did the book say that boys fart more because in our house the ladies never fart 😉
The book looks fab – my eldest would really love a book like that as he’s really into biology and the human body!
P.s. The heart picture is correct, pictures of the body or organs from the body should be drawn as if it is facing you, rather than being flipped. If that makes sense. If you look up pictures of the body, or the lungs you’ll see it
I reckon my 5 year old would probably like this, it sounds like it might be quite interesting for me too (a while since I studied biology!). Agree it is a shame there are no gold stars though, they LOVE the gold stars thing.
Isaac would love this book, he is fascinated by the human body
sounds like quite a good book for younger children to start learning about their bodies
Sounds like a great book to get them interested and learning at the same time. The ‘fart’ bit made me chuckle!
My youngest is learning all about the human body at school at the moment so this looks perfect!