The Secret Life of Boo-Boos: The super science behind how your body heals bumps, bruises, scratches, and scrapes!
“The Secret Life of Boo-Boos is a winner for future doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants, or anyone wanting to learn about the human body in a clever and understandable way.”
The Secret Life of Boo-Boos: The Super Science Behind How Your Body Heals Bumps, Bruises, Scratches, and Scrapes! is supposedly for four to eight year olds. Readers of all ages will learn a thing or two about our bodies and how wounds are treated from within.
The first page introduces an orange and bluish-purple egg-shaped creature with glasses who says, “Hi, I’m a boo-boo.” The double-page spread shows a playground with lots of injuries taking place: a boy’s green face getting hit by a soccer ball, another child getting a face scratch from his own fingernails, another child stumbling, another getting kicked from behind, a child falling out of a tree, and a girl scraping her knee while playing jump rope.
The next double-page spread talks about blood and what it is. White blood cells are drawn as warriors swimming along with the red blood cell river. Some are in boats or wearing inner tubes and nurse hats. They are eating the black viruses, bacteria, and other waste. All of this is taking place in an arm with greenish-blue veins and red arteries.
How Our Bodies Heal is the next double-page spread. It shows four steps in the healing process and illustrates how a pimple is formed in the different layers of skin. ”When the platelets dry, they form a crust on top of the boo-boo that works like a natural bandage to keep out viruses and bacteria.”
The next double-page spread is a catalog of boo-boos, including cuts, scratches, bumps, burns, bites and stings, and punctures. Green and yellow-faced children are shown getting these boo-boos, along with a dog and cat. ”Luckliy, our skin protects us like bubble wrap, helping us avoid damage in important parts of our body, like muscles, bone, and organs, and keeping viruses and bacteria out!”
The pages go on to explain basic first aid (what to do), the rainbow inside a bruise, boo-boos in the wild, and an interesting page of how boo-boos have been treated around the world in ancient times and present. The next page shows how wild animals protect themselves from burns (mud for a rhino), and wounds (licking). Natural human remedies from plants and honey are shown on the opposite page.
There is even a true or false test on the next two pages with answers in the back. The last double-page spread has some interesting facts that didn’t fit elsewhere, like white blood cells and platelets only making up one percent of a drop of blood, and how donating blood can help others and the requirements to donate (17 and over 110 pounds, no recent tattoos or piercings).
The book is pretty wonderful, easy to understand, funny, and colorful. Only one thing stands out as a typo; otherwise it makes no sense. ”Platelets last five days because they must be kept at body temperature.” With a little tweaking of that sentence, the book would be perfect!
The Secret Life of Boo-Boos is a winner for future doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants, or anyone wanting to learn about the human body in a clever and understandable way.