Gold Stars: Journey Around and Inside Your Amazing Body

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