My Burptastic Body Book (Dirty Bertie) by David Roberts and Alan MacDonald
| My Burptastic Body Book (Dirty Bertie) by David Roberts and Alan MacDonald | |
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| Category: Children's Non-Fiction | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A cartoonish primer for all the elements of your body that would like as not feature in a cartoon – or a Dirty Bertie story. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 144 | Date: July 2017 |
| Publisher: Stripes Publishing | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781847156754 | |
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Oh, to be young and innocent, and to be full of questions. Questions like 'is eating my bogies good for me', or 'why is poo brown', or 'what makes sweat smell'. You don't have to be a kid like Dirty Bertie to want to know the answers – respectively, no; it's down to dead bacteria; and it doesn't – it's other bacteria again. If you think you have a lad (or, let's face it, a lass) interested in learning such stuff, this book could well be the place to turn.
It's a black and white, but very graphically-minded, primer for the body. All told it will get you from an umbilicus and the 300 lumps of cartilage making a baby's skeleton, right the way up to the toothless centenarian, or perhaps someone equally old and disgusting, like a teacher. It does of course concentrate on the things the young reader will be concerned with, such as earwax, snot and vampires draining you of blood, rather than anything more salubrious.
But that's not to say that in the data here, and in the visual and easy teaching manner it has, you don't cover some 'sensible' biology. The contents of blood, the structure of the eyeball, and the basics of the teenaged growth spurt are all here, and again in just enough detail for the minds of the intended audience. You might be stuffy about this book and think it encourages the young into thinking or knowing the wrong things, but it just doesn't – the only such claim could be levelled at a page listing foodstuffs that are likely to deliver you a healthy fart, and let's face it, these questions and thoughts are in the child's mind long before they pick this book up.
It is firmly set in the world of Dirty Bertie, with him asking questions of us and the narrative guide that leads him through his body. This means it's firmly in his mindset, making it appeal to his readers, but it also means it does have a male bias – the female puberty is too much, perhaps, and it does seem too boy-full, if not boyish, at times. But the series creators have got in someone else (Dan Chernett) to do the proper diagrams for them, so while it again looks childish and silly that's just Bertie, and not the contents. His character does leach over well from his fiction appearances – to such an extent he's so vegetables-averse he doesn't ask the one key question about carroty vomit that we all need an explanation for. Still, his presence is here to sell a book that does have a lot of relevant information, and I'd posit the right approach in making the young biologist self-aware.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
Life on Earth: Human Body: With 100 Questions and 70 Lift-flaps! by Heather Alexander and Andres Lozano is a great book that covers a lot of the more routine questions.
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You can read more book reviews or buy My Burptastic Body Book (Dirty Bertie) by David Roberts and Alan MacDonald at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy My Burptastic Body Book (Dirty Bertie) by David Roberts and Alan MacDonald at Amazon.com.
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