Dès 4 ans ( )

Lift the flap and learn: The human body by Pascale Hedelin, illustrated by Robert Barborini

Simple, cartoon illustrations on white backgrounds illustrate this guide to the human body. The end pages have a colored silhouette of a body – for some reason, the presumably female silhouette on the front cover has a question mark, the presumably male figure on the back cover does not (I’m guessing genders by the hair length). The first few pages introduce birth, along with, among other things, a pull tab of a woman giving birth. No, I’m not kidding – you get to pull the baby out of her body. The next spread talks briefly about growing up, then the book moves into the composition of the body. Muscles, bones, circulation system, lungs, digestion (pull tab! Watch the poop come out!) brain, five senses, and the mouth are all covered. Then the book discusses getting sick, taking care of yourself, and skin. The skin section is accompanied by a flip strip of body parts. You can lift different flaps to see parts of a girl’s body. Turn them over, and do the same to see a boy’s body.

Verdict: The illustrations are cute and it covers a lot of different aspects, but some of the choices for pull tabs are *cough* a little weird. Plus, there’s the double-whammy of movable parts AND spiral binding. Also, some of the movable parts are badly designed and don’t work. Not recommended, at least not for my audience which combines a fairly conservative town with kids who are extremely hard on books. But I had a blast getting the other library staff to pull out the baby and make a poopy *heh heh heh* and I'll pass this on to someone who works with children and might want an illustrated guide to the body

ISBN: 978-1897349861; Published March 2011 by Owlkids Books; Review copy provided by publisher for Cybils