Brains

Here is another welcome picture book in the series, Big Science for Little Minds. It follows three books on Atoms, Planets and Germs published Pushkin. The brightly coloured pages and endpapers immediately caught my attention and draw me into this hardback.

The language is simple and straightforward, as would be expected when explaining a very complicated organ to a child just starting school and learning to read. The use of an analogy of a computer to the human brain is clever and the illustrations on this spread, as well as throughout the book, are of a high standard.

In thirty-two pages this title covers how the brain makes our bodies move and gives us ideas, neurons, different sizes of brains, location of brains etc. I particularly like how Devolle draws this actual book on the pages which illustrate, ‘You are using your brain right now to read this book’ (p.16-17). The pictures throughout are bold, colourful and accurate; they are just what young students need.

If you want to find out how many brains an octopus has then this book is where you will find the answer! It also compares it to a worm’s brain! Congratulations to this author/illustrator for producing a book which successfully captures the child’s imagination and at the same time educates them at a basic level in how the human brain works. This is a great book for parents, carers, teachers and librarians to share with youngsters and it is certain to spark conversation and lead to lots more questions.