Body Battles

616.07

This book introduces how our body’s natural defenses combat harmful materials. The book is presented in a humorous and fun way with rhyming text. At first, I thought this was a clever book teaching about the body. However, towards the end the author brought up drugs and how they negatively affect our bodies. The book then seemed to be only about teaching kids to not use drugs. Although the book could be fun for young children, it seemed to have an agenda with a delivery I did not care for. ( )

“Body battles” is a nice and interesting take of the body and the functions that it has. The story takes the perspective of a 3rd person narrative and describes several disease fighting functions the body possesses. The message the book gives is really a nice way for children to understand certain body functions and how to keep your-self healthy and clean. One thing that I liked about the text was the illustrations did more than just have cartoon illustrations of the body functions. They also show what exactly the function looks like in real life and shows what really happens within the body. The second thing I found interesting was the language used within the story wasn’t “dumbed down” for the younger students it kept the highly educated words. The passage I found to help describe how they didn’t lower the detail and description is when they describe the stomach acid, “Stomach acid is also called hydrochloric acid or HCI.” ( )

I have fond memories of this fun and informative antropomorphization of the immune system. A good example of quality children's science writing. ( )