Rating: WORTHY!
I got this one as an ARC from Netgalley. I had several problems not related to reading, before I even got to reading. The book was a disaster on my smart phone. It consisted of two title pages and two double content pages and that was it. There was no beginning and no end! I loved the idea of a book that teaches children healthy eating habits without lecturing them, but this really taught nothing in this form.
As I said, I read this originally on my smart phone, which is doable, despite the text being too small for comfort, but evidently not something to recommend. The first problem is that this had no 'cover', which is no big deal typically since the writer has nothing to do with the cover. In the case of children's books and graphic novels, that may not be the case, however. The book started at location 2 (a starting point I've never encountered before!). I could not get to location 1, not even by accessing the 'Go To' function and typing in '1', so I had no idea what was there from this version.
The first visible page was a title page of sorts, so I swiped past that and the next page (also a title page). After that I expected page one and the start of the story, but I joined the story in progress on what I later discovered was page 9 (on the pad), which meant that four of the story's pages had gone missing. It seemed like the brain and the taste buds had overdone the eating bit. On the next page, the upset stomach was on the phone complaining, and there was no more after that - no text, no pictures, no pages! I cannot recommend this for phone use. The experience was a lot better on the iPad in Bluefire Reader, which I'm evidently fortunate, in this case, to have access to, otherwise I would never have been able to review it positively.
On the pad, the book did indeed have a cover, and some really nice illustrations by Ann Bonin. This story began with the stomach being surrounded by junk food - rich in sugars, salts and fats - the very things humans craved when they were living primitive lives and these things were hard to get. Now these foods are everywhere, but the craving, instead of luring us to seek out nutritious foods, is endlessly leading us down the stodgy path of food that will fatten us up for the kill! A triumph of nurturing nasty over nature, and the kill being a life as short as those who lived in those caves!
Raymond the Brain works in the control center of the body village - a apt metaphor. Unfortunately this food was all junk: candy, chips and dip, ice cream, cake, soda. It all piled in, and Steven Stomach was slogging away trying to process all this trashy food. Why all these characters were male (Raymond Brain, Steven Stomach, Lyle Liver) I don't know, but at least they weren't all white!
This isn't a science book by any means, but I felt it was a bit confusing by saying that breaking down the junk food was tough. Like I said, it's a complex world, but generally the problem with junk food is that it's easy to break down so you get the junk food rush, whereas regular food is harder to break down so it naturally provides the body with the slow, steady, easy release of some of the same kinds of things, but at a kindly pace. Obviously it's better not to flood the system.
That aside I fully recommend this book as a really good way to get your kids to understand that something which tastes really good isn't necessarily the best thing keep your tummy happy. The back pages of the books (which were none existent in the Kindle app on my phone!) list some extras - whereby you can download things like a weekly challenge log and a brain workout, and fun activities, watch videos (where you can meet Larry and Rosie Lung, and Kerry and Kelly Kidney), and participate in a weekly challenge. The weekly challenge of as of this posting was food bingo. I recommend this as a great way to encourage kids to eat and be healthy.
