Review
Waimea Naturopathic Physician, Dr. Heather Manley, has come up with a way to help children understand how important nutrition and a healthy lifestyle are to maintaining healthy bodies. She just published the first in a series of activity workbook and audio books highlighting two girls adventures through the different body systems. Her first is entitled, The Human Body Detectives: The Lucky Escape. The main characters, Merrin and Pearl, are based on Manley s own young daughters of the same names. In the tradition of educational adventure series like Magic School Bus and Magic Tree House, this story magically catapults the girls into their baby brother s digestive system where they quickly realize they must help him by extracting a penny he swallowed. Through their action packed adventure from the mouth, down the esophagus, into the stomach, and through the intestines, they experience some close calls like almost being squirted with hydrochloric acid and being bumped by gas bubbles. Their encounters force them to learn first hand, all about the digestive system and why it is so important to eat healthy foods. Prospective readers may wonder how the girls actually avoid the inevitable of emerging at the other end. Luckily, a bit of magic comes to the rescue just in time, hence the lucky escape part of the title. Manley coordinated the release of her first book with the launch of her website, drheathernd.com. The site represents Manley s dream of providing a resource for people, especially parents of young children, to learn about preventative health care and take charge of their own and their family s health. Originally from Canada, Manley moved to the Big Island in January of 2002 with her husband, Fred Dickson, and their two daughters, after completing medical school at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon. Since moving to Hawaii, Manley has worked part time seeing patients, mainly children. What she enjoys most is helping parents set up a preventative care plan and their own pharmacy of natural remedies. Lyn Utsugi, a mom of two who recently moved from Waimea to Kauai, said, Having Heather help me develop a preventative pharmacy has been great, especially when the kids get sick or under the weather, or while we are traveling. Heather gave me the basic natural remedies and then we expanded it to cover our special needs: allergy symptoms and sinus stuff for Kamryn and bronchial stuff for Alex. My goal is for people to become proactive and confident in their own healthcare, she said. Innately, we all know how to do it and our bodies don t want to be sick, period. If you have the right tools, then you can support your body and take care of yourself and your family, Manley said. She began lightening her practice load to concentrate on health education. She started by visiting pre-schools, and later elementary classrooms, helping students develop an awareness of the importance of taking care of their bodies. She had them fill out doctors forms and listen to each other s heartbeats through a stethoscope. She emphasized to them that eating naturally colorful foods means you are eating more vitamins that keep you healthy and strong. I believe in focusing on things the kids should be eating, like colorful, whole foods, rather than what they shouldn t, she said. And in teaching children balance. I don t believe in being hard core. Kids need treats once in awhile. The key is to teach them self-care, to understand how their bodies work. Then they are more apt to make good choices. I m really into kids pro-active that way. This led me to start writing children s books, she said. As my kids got older I really saw a need for these books. There s nothing out there except technical reference books. --North Hawaii Times
Product Description
In the Human Body Detectives (HBD) series, two young Human Body Detectives, Merrin and Pearl, magically enter different systems in the body to solve a health mystery. Through action packed fiction stories, listeners learn how the various systems work and what foods best fuel each system. In their first case, The Lucky Escape, Merrin and Pearl s little brother Robbie has swallowed a penny. Now through magic and imagination they find themselves in his digestive system where they must grab the penny, save Robbie, and narrowly escape his poopy diaper. The accompanying workbook filled with puzzles reinforces what kids have learned and help them further understand the importance of maintaining a healthy digestive system. Includes a 24 page workbook filled with puzzles and games, audio cd and 2 full color pages of stickers.
