What's inside?: See-through pages and magic surprises!

Superman isn’t the only one with X-ray vision. In What’s Inside: See-Through Pages and Magic Surprises, children can hold book pages up to the light and see right through to the other side.

Developed by Okido, a London-based group of children’s book writers, designers and illustrators, What’s Inside is a half science book, half activity book that makes learning fun.

To discover what’s inside their bodies and what makes it grow, children hold their pages to the light and see an eerie skeleton standing at attention. They also see body muscles dancing a jig, the brain thinking and controlling various parts of the body, and food being chewed, swallowed, and funneled through the intestines. They even see poop come out the other end after the food is digested.

Next, children hold their pages to the light to inspect the inside of machines like robots, clocks and rockets. The X-ray vision pages show the children that machines are made up of batteries, gadgets, microchips, engines, and even rocket fuel.

Other “what’s inside” themes challenge children to find out what’s inside of nature (like caves, trees, and even a whale’s belly); and what’s inside of buildings (like houses and castles).

Once children become experts at “what’s inside,” they get to try their hand at visually explaining what things go inside other things. For example, they are asked to sketch what’s inside of a gift box, what’s inside of tree branches, what’s inside a refrigerator, and what’s on the other side of a door.

What’s Inside is a high-interest, fun-loving picture book designed to get children to put their thinking caps on. Its cover is as sturdy as a board book, and its pages are thick and easy for little fingers to turn.

The illustrations are friendly enough, but the fact that they’re “X-ray-able” makes them downright fun to explore.

Great for supplemental reading, an early science lesson, or for jump-starting a budding inventor’s creativity.