Look inside Your Body

"I love the Usborne books, especially their illustrations. It’s engaging, with images that are slightly cartoonish. Again, this book demystifies the human body a bit for children. I like the fact that there’s quite a lot of interaction and engagement with it. So it keeps it fun and not scary. It’s just the right amount of disgusting and squeamish for children in this age group. Yes and also it’s a voyage of discovery with all the interaction that it has. You’re not just sitting reading lots of facts; it makes it into a game and gets your imagination flowing. Children between five and nine, they’re absorbing and learning facts all the time. Anything that engages them, anything that makes their learning interactive, is a complete gift. Books that help children understand the body can enable children with chronic diseases articulate concerns or understand what’s going on with their body or a friend’s body. I think they’re still frightened, but I think the more information children have, the more they can process what’s happening. Often, I’ll use this book in clinic with children after they’ve been in hospital to talk through what happened. It’s not just the parent that needs to understand everything that happened to the child, the child needs to understand it themselves, whether it was a one-off bad thing that happened, or whether it’s something that’s going to stay with them. In that case, I need them to understand that it’s part of them, but it doesn’t define who they are. In terms of understanding normal anatomy, demystifying it, engaging with it and giving different words to children about the body, this book is great. But it’s also an incredibly helpful tool for a parent, and especially for a professional in clinic. It is something non-threatening that I tend to have on the clinical room table. First I ask them if they like storybooks and 99% of children say yes. Then I open the book on the right page and talk about their body, I talk through what happened and what medicines they got and why. Once they have the book in their hands, they don’t feel as intimidated or scared and often you see them getting a better understanding of themselves and why they need to keep going with a medicine or why they had a lot of medicine and now they’re fine."