As I just mentioned in my previous review (for another Usborne Science book called What's Biology All About ?, that you can read here), we recently received two children's science books from Usborne Books in honour of Science Week.
Why Do We Eat ? is aimed at younger readers who are just learning to read and/or who have a short attention span. The texts are much shorter and many pages only have a few sentences to read in relatively large print. What predominates are the huge, brightly coloured illustrations and photos that really help little learners to understand some quite complex concepts.
The target audience may be younger readers (the suggested age is 4+ on the website and it's ideal for 6-year-old Juliette) but, as you can see, that didn't stop 9-year-old Sophie from reading it cover to cover and learning some interesting nuggets of information too.
My absolute favourite page is the photo of a hand taken under a special light to show the germs - the girls both looked at it, half horrified and half enthralled, and said "Ohh that's why you keep on at us to wash our hands when we've been playing outside" ! Definitely a case of a picture being worth a thousand words and for that alone I'd buy this book !
It contains a lot more than that though, explaining how the human digestive system works, as well as various aspects of nutrition and concerns such as food poisoning or food allergies. I love the illustrations, showing little people working away inside the human body or a digger who leaves all the rubbish in his "mouth" having all his "teeth" falling out, which will really appeal to young readers and help them to relate to the words on the page.
There's only one minute thing that annoyed me - the use of the word "pee" in the page about water. The book explains some really complex notions using some quite technical jargon so it seems a shame to dumb it down and say pee instead of urine, which is a lot simpler than some of the words like histamine, carbohydrates and intestines that are used elsewhere in the book.
That's just one minor niggle though and apart from that I think it's a fabulous book for young readers.
star rating : 4.5/5
RRP : £4.99
Key Stage: FS/KS1 E/S; Age 4+ (info)
Lexile Measure: 760L (info)
Hardback:
ISBN: 9780746074404
32 pages
204 x 150mm
Author/Editor: Stephanie Turnbull
for more information : http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/catalogue.aspx?cat=1&area=S&subcat=SB&id=2043
Other reviews you may be interested in :
Usborne books are great. My Emma likes it, espacially First Noisy Book :)
ReplyDeleteWe've read this lots of times - got it out of the library when my son was 3.5 and he loved it. Will probably get it out again in the future as I think he'd get more stuff out of it now.
ReplyDeletei like usborne books too, never seen this one before, will need to keep an eye out!
ReplyDeletethis would be a good resource to use with my Year 2 class
ReplyDeleteThis looks awesome, I think my son would love it!! Again, something I don't think I would not have known about without looking through your blog. I keep reading good things about usborne books.
ReplyDelete