Customer Reviews

The Brain (Mulberry Books)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Excellent health/well being book with a great step by step introduction to the brain, its parts, how it works and the memory. The pictures are the best part. Contains excellent color illustrations and will be of interest to students from the 4th grade through the 9th grade. It's also a recommended read for the teachers.

Seymour Simon books are can't miss choices for readers young and old. Simon engages the reader with the first sentence and doesn't release him/her until the last word. The use of white text on black background for some of the pages is an interesting twist to this worthwhile book.

Vocabulary is a hurdle difficult to overcome in a science text for young readers. How does one simplify or substitute for words like: neuron, bacteria, micrograph, dendrite, axon, cerebrum, or thalamus? The simple answer is that one can't. Despite this inherent obstacle, Simon does a yeomanly job explainting and clarifying the workings of the brain, an incredibly complex machine. The illustrations in this volume are good and are great adjuncts to the text. They are not quite up to the standard of those in other Seymour books, however.

Four students in grades 4-8, not AGES 4-8, Simon's book is a wonderful introduction to the physiology of our remarkable brain.

This book is NOT suitable for ages 4-8. There may be only 32 pages, but half of them are completely filled with text, explaining cerebellum and neurons and synapses and dendrites, oh my! It's just way over the head of most in the 4- to 8-year-old set, and I do read advanced books to my children. My 6-year-old gleaned some stuff from it, but it was way too technical really for her. My 8-year-old is at the beginning of the range that can really handle it, but he reads at a 6th grade level, so he's probably not representative of his age. I'd say 4th to 8th grade level is probably a fair range, maybe some advanced 2nd and 3rd graders. It doesn't talk down, so it'd provide a suitable broad overview above that range as well.

A lot of terms are defined. And that you go on to define more terms using those terms. It's rather technical and dry. I think this could have been made more engaging with more comparisons to illustrate how a neuron or dendrite works, more diagrams, etc. It's fine as a technical treatise, but it's not a book to really deal with in one setting, way too much crammed into too little space. There are full-page pictures every other page, which are usually one more view of a brain using imaging machinery (CT scan, etc). If I read it again, I'd break it up into several days' worth of reading, stopping to provide my own illustrations, etc. For the 4th-8th *grade* set, it's an okay, but not great book. Do not even think of buying this for children ages 4 to 8 as the suggested age range suggests.

Its a kids book, but not a fairy tale. I think that with this Smithsonian series there will be technical terms a child, and even unfamiliar adults, will be stopped by. At the same time, with repeated exposure to such terms, I feel the child can get it. My daughter has this set and when I bought it we understood there would be a new learning curve for her, this is exactly why we bought it. Introducing topics in neuroscience will challenge most readers without a background within, especially a child developing litaracy skills - but I think its worth the effort. To support this goal I felt the images were excellent and make revisiting the pages easy.

If you are keen on fostering a sense of curiosity and a scientific mind within a child, the decision is a no-brainer, buy them. And for keen adults - fun to look at as we attempt to help our children grow.

This is a very good introduction to the brain and its functions. The book has numerous high quality photos of the brain, CT/MRI,spinal cord/nerves and more. Neuroscience is made fun for both kids and adults!

I love Seymour Simon's books and his series on the body is no exception. I do guided reading and independent reading in my ESOL class and have a Bosnian student who is going to go nuts about this book. She loves non-fiction.