So You Want To Build A Human?

Children are curious about the world around them, and very curious about the body and its workings. I've always felt that it is important to feed this curiosity with as much information the child can understand as possible. That is where this absolutely fantastic book 'So you want to build a human?' comes to play. 

First impressions

A lot of books you'll find are generally A4 size. It's a great workable size, however, an A4 size book with lots of contents is always daunting, and I find it hard to encourage little person to at least try and read some of the information. The books appear overwhelming, and I've already lost part of the battle. The great thing about 'So you want to build a human?' is the size. Larger than A4 (but we're not talking huge A3 size), the size makes a huge difference to the presentation. The lager area means everything feels neatly spaced out, doesn't feel like an overload of writing and means kids love it! 

What's inside?

The book covers a vast array of topics involved with the human body, in fact there is so much detail I can imagine using this book for a number of years to come. Described as 'the ultimate human body manual' to doesn't fall short of a manual! 

Beginning with a great introduction into the complexities of a working body, the book nicely moves on to talking about the skeleton. Covering the main areas of the skeleton as well as introducing important information such as bone marrow. 

The next topic is the brain, once again the detail found across the two page spread is amazing. I've loved the fact that little person has been introduced to terminology such as occipital lobe, temporal lobe, frontal lobe and so much more. 

Moving onto muscles, these pages definitely took me back to school years and memorising skeletal muscles, smooth muscles, cardiac muscle, biceps, triceps and much more that is involved with muscle workings. 

I was excited to see the next two page spread, as we'd recently talked about this topic- heart and blood supply. I have been on the lookout for simple yet detailed enough explanation for little person about the heart, in order to help him understand a little more about the 4 chambers involved. Ventricles, atriums, arteries, veins, capillaries snd many more important terms have been covered in this section. 

As the book works through the body the next two page spread focusses on the lungs.

As with all the previous pages, I am not disappointed at the amount of detail presented. 

Digestive system, the liver, kidney and bladder, skin are the next few topics, swiftly flowing over to the 5 senses, with the next in details topics about the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and touch. 

The fantastic thing about 'So you want to build a human?' is the fact that it is very concise, therefore the next topics covered are, the nervous system, the immune system, endocrine system, reproductive system, the cell, ending the book with a beautiful poster to hang up! 

As you can probably tell, 'So you want to build a human?' really does cover all areas needed to build a human. It doesn't briefly introduce organs and outline what they do, but each topic has a two page spread dedicated to going into as much detail as possible and at the same time easy and user friendly for children. As well as being truly impressed with each section, I was immensely happy to find the book covered areas such as endocrine system, nervous system, broke down working of the liver and clearly and concisely explained the cell. Little person is 8, but with this book he's definitely learnt much more than what is presented in our science textbooks that we use, and I am thrilled (who wouldn't be?!) The book is aimed at 8+, and I am sure we will refer back to this book for years to come! 

I've talked about the detail within this book, and the amount of information presented, which probably has made it sound like a GCSE textbook, but it is far from a boring textbook. The illustrations in this book really bring to life each topic, help with the explanations and add the detail to the words, making this much more than just a book with writing. 

This is our favourite human body book, and with the hard cover and sturdy pages, I can see this book looking as good as new for years to come! 

For more information about 'How to Build a human?' click here.