Tag Andrés Lozano

Marvellous Body

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Marvellous Body
Jane Wilsher and Andrés Lozano
What on Earth Books

The focus of the second in the ingenious Magic Lens Book series is the human body and its inner workings.

Our bodies are amazing: that, emerges loud and clear from this book. The author confirms it in the opening spread 24-hour body where we read, ‘The body eats and drinks for energy. It learns and daydreams too. Then it sleeps. The body grows and keeps on changing.’ Even that straightforward paragraph gives young readers plenty to think about and it’s good to see the reminder that everyone is different too.

The rest of the spreads are more specific, the first being about the brain, the body’s HQ – what each part does and how it functions. There’s a ‘Find It Box’ in the bottom corner of this and on most other of the spreads, asking the reader to use the magic lens and find the items listed – that’s lots of fun learning. The function of each of the five senses is simply and concisely explained in a large fact box and smaller ones provide a considerable, but never overwhelming, amount of information.

Eyes, ears, then the nose and tongue are the focus of the next three spreads. I found Andrés Lozano’s illustration for Nose and Tongue particularly amusing.

Teeth (which includes dental health), then Skin and Hair come next, followed by bones. Prepare to be confronted by a large skeleton …

Did you know that over half the bones in the body are in the hands and feet? That’s more than one hundred: check the clear diagram.

No matter which system or part of the body you want to find out about, if you have an interest in staying healthy and happy, or in the medicines doctors are busy inventing right now, then there’s something on the topic here; and the clarity of each explanation given is first-rate. Enticing, exciting and a rewarding learning experience, and you couldn’t make a non-fiction book for children more interactive than this.

Listified!

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Listified!
Andrew Pettie, illustrated by Andrés Lozano
Britannica Books

This is a cornucopia of a book that is so easy to get totally immersed in that before you know where you are, a couple of hours have gone by.

Divided into eight chapters on various aspects of our world – space, nature, dinosaur times, animals, the body, being human, inventions and game changers – it’s written in a humorous style, and absolutely bursting with amazing, bite size portions of information and I’m sure the majority of adults as well as children will learn a considerable amount.

Did you know for instance that a corned beef sandwich was smuggled onto NASA’s Gemini 3 space mission by astronaut, John Young? I don’t think much of his taste.

On the topic of taste, I was astonished to read in the Being Human chapter that the average person in Switzerland eats 176 chocolate bars in a year while in China, the average person eats a mere two. I wonder where they have better teeth?

There certainly have been some amazing inventions but this book contains 8 of the weirdest ever made. These include a motorised ice-cream cone that automatically rotates your ice-cream to save you having to turn the cone around to lick the ice-cream on the other side – totally bonkers. I know many people rely on their mobiles for lots of things but did you know there’s a mobile that doubles as an electric beard trimmer? Yes really. On the other hand, I might just have to seek out some of the smart underpants I read about as being in development and give a pair to my partner: these measure how much your buttock and leg muscles are moving and then tell you if you need to up your exercise regime.

You really can’t beat nature as designer though: look at these incredible examples of the Fibonacci sequence found in plants.

In all Andrew Pettie has stashed over 300 lists between the covers of this weighty tome, many with quirky illustrations by Andrés Lorenzo; there are also a fair number of photographs too, plus a glossary and index. Love the playful list headings.

Add to family bookshelves (so long as they’re strong enough it carry its weight) to KS2 collections and beyond, and libraries.

Marvellous Machines

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Marvellous Machines
Jane Wilsher and Andrés Lozano
What on Earth Books

This book comes with a detachable ‘magic lens’ embedded inside its front cover that enables readers to look into buildings and the inner workings of all manner of mechanical things large and small, relatively simple as well as highly complex.

This is achieved by focussing the lens on the areas of red patterning (stippling, cross hatching or brickwork) which then disappears to show such things as the energy connections powering all kinds of machines in the kitchen, robots at work,

the insides of a container ship, a submarine, a space station …

and even a human body.

The book concludes with some thought-provoking questions.

Mechanically-minded youngsters especially will love the opportunity to peek into various components of a space station and to use the lens to hunt for the dozen items listed in the ‘find it’ panel on the relevant spread, or to do likewise in and around the cyclists on the jet aeroplane and “Bicycle’ spreads.

As well as anything else, this book reminds younger users of the enormous wealth of machines we rely on in our daily lives and to discover something about how they function.