The Human Body Factory: A Guide To Your Insides

by Dan Green, Edmond Davis (Illustrator)

Overview

Step inside the busy, bustling factory that is the human body, and find out about all the different body parts and systems that keep whirring night and day!

The Human Body Factory is an action-packed and informative guide to your insides. Each "department" is introduced by the busy workers who keep everything running smoothly, from the big boss sending out orders in the brain to waste being sorted and pushed out of the body. The ingenious artworks are packed with humorous details, all backed up with Dan Green's fascinating facts and easy-to-understand text describing and explaining the body's processes. There's a fun search-and-find activity on each page, as well as a quiz at the end to see how much you've discovered about the human body.

Whether it's busy workers wearing biohazard suits in the large intestine, lab technicians mixing gastric juices in the stomach with a giant whisk, or the lungs depicted as a gym, you'll find plenty to amaze and amuse in this comprehensive, fact-filled guide to the human body.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780753478967
Publisher:	Kingfisher
Publication date:	07/18/2023
Pages:	56
Product dimensions:	9.50(w) x 11.95(h) x 0.15(d)
Age Range:	7 - 11 Years

About the Author

Dan Green is the voice of Basher, the author of numerous Basher titles. He's a journalist and science writer with a brilliant knack for communicating complicated information in a child-friendly way. Two of his titles, Kingfisher's Human Body Factory and Scholastic's Discover More: The Elements, were shortlisted for the Royal Society Young People's Book Prize. Dan has an MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, where he specialized in geology.

Edmond Davis studied design in the 1980s and since then, he has embarked on a career as an illustrator. Passionate about technical drawing and the science-fiction subgenre steam punk, Edmond has worked for a variety of clients, including Penguin and British Gas.

Editorial Reviews

Using an ingenious body-as-factory metaphor, Green and Davis offer a “wild roller-coaster tour of the cranking, sloshing, pumping parts that keep you alive and kicking!” A bustling crew of miniature pilots, scuba divers, scientists, and others are shown hard at work throughout the body, demonstrating how different systems or organs operate: jet ski riders represent the flow of oxygenated blood away from the heart, while railcars and conveyers truck food through the digestive tract. Dominated by the workers’ thoughts and commentary (“If we don’t get oxygen into the muscle fast, I’m afraid the boss will get a cramp”), it’s an enlightening yet unstuffy guide to the body that begs to be pored over. Includes a large foldout poster of a cutaway body. Ages 7–up. (July)

Publishers Weekly

This fantastical look at the inner workings of bodies covers a lot of material, including systems, organs, and processes, all using a factory as a metaphor. . . . Numerous speech and thought bubbles build in humor and further details. Labels and occasional diagrams help orient readers. . . . [R]eaders will enjoy browsing this lively title” —School Library Journal

“A bustling crew of miniature pilots, scuba divers, scientists, and others are shown hard at work throughout the body, demonstrating how different systems or organs operate.Dominated by the workers' thoughts and commentary it's an enlightening yet unstuffy guide to the body that begs to be pored over.” —Publishers Weekly (STARRED)

From the Publisher

Gr 4–6—This fantastical look at the inner workings of bodies covers a lot of material, including systems, organs, and processes, all using a factory as a metaphor. Each spread, encased in a yellow-and-gray-striped ribbon reminiscent of a construction zone, represents a department. An inset locates the organ or system within a body outline and introduces it. In bright colors, a cross-section of the part(s) under scrutiny is shown with dozens of frenetic workers, pieces of machinery, and equipment presented in small vignettes that illustrate its various functions and features. Numerous speech and thought bubbles build in humor and further details. Labels and occasional diagrams help orient readers. The spreads begin with the brain and proceed in a relatively top-to-bottom order ending with "Reproduction" or the "New Model Planning Unit" and the somewhat incongruous "Pregnancy" or "New Model Production" department. Each panel stands alone, missing opportunities for continuity, although references to other pages are given where appropriate. The busyness of the illustrations mimics the "Where's Waldo" (Candlewick) style and requires close viewing as does the inclusion of Clatterbones, a skeleton that readers are encouraged to locate in many of the spreads. While the frenzy on the pages might not help illuminate the inner workings of the human body, readers will enjoy browsing this lively title.—Carol S. Surges, Longfellow Middle School, Wauwatosa, WI

School Library Journal

Take an eye-catching journey through the human body, examining various organs and systems. Accurate, relatively detailed information spiced up by a humorous presentation accompanies lively, intricate illustrations of a human body–as-factory, staffed by hundreds of tiny uniformed workers whose dialogue bubbles contain information about the body's functions. "Blood sugar needs to be topped off! I'll send some agents to the liver with messages to release more glucose from its supplies," thinks a worker in the pancreas as he juggles red briefcases of hormonal information to release. The Where's Waldo?–style illustrations and relatively simple text (by comparison to David Macaulay's The Way We Work, 2008, for instance) will keep readers engaged, since there's so much going on. If bodily functions aren't sufficiently interesting for some readers, they can keep busy looking for a tiny skeletal figure hidden on each spread. Amusing trivia--"A dog's olfactory bulbs are about 40 times bigger than a human's"--adds yet another dimension to this surprisingly appealing yet comprehensive romp through anatomy and physiology. A glossary covers some of the more complex terms, but there is no source information. A large fold-out poster that draws together many of the individual systems will enhance understanding. Terrific for classrooms and recreational browsing, this information-packed effort will also appeal to puzzle lovers and those that savor complex illustrations. (Nonfiction. 9-14)

Kirkus Reviews