Guts is a picture book for
children who want to learn more about the human digestive system.  It includes photography, color-enhanced
imaging, and views from microscopes in a selection of remarkable pictures.  The book is small and the print is big, so
it contains limited information, but it still conveys a good proportion of the
basic facts.  The writing is clear and
should be accessible to children willing to make the effort to try to
understand.  The greatest fault of the
book pedagogically is that it separates the text and the pictures almost
completely. The pictures are on one page while the text faces it.  The presentation would me more interesting
visually to combine the two, and it would also help readers to know what are
the different parts of the organs or processes depicted.  This book would probably not be very useful
for use in a school, except as an source for pictures to show students.  However, it might be appropriate for some
inquisitive children who want to learn about human biology on their own.

Thanks to Marysusan Noll for her
thoughts on this book, which informed this review.

© 2005 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved. 

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long
Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His
main research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and
psychology.

Categories: Children