Inside Your Outside

March 1, 2004
PreS-K-This installment in the series appears at first glance to be a useful overview of the human body. However, while the text flows in a pleasant Seuss-like way and the colorful artwork will please fans of The Cat in the Hat, some of the information is just plain wrong. For example, the statement that there are "soft bones in your nose" is incorrect; the nose is actually made up of cartilage. In another section, the text asserts that "in our stomachs there's food we ate three days ago." Food generally passes through the stomach in a matter of hours; it may take days to eliminate from the body, but the stomach empties relatively quickly. The heart is described as the biggest muscle in the body, but the gluteus maximus is actually the largest. For a better treatment of the subject for beginning readers, try Shelley Rotner and Stephen Calcagnino's The Body Book (Orchard, 2000) or Barbara Seuling's From Head to Toe (Holiday, 2002).-Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, NY

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