The Incredible Pop-Up Body Book by Richard Walker

The Incredible Pop-Up Body Book features a full-size pop-up poster of the human body. It also covers a variety of subjects all dealing with the human body.

I like this book. Besides the poster, the book tackles a few interesting topics: the cells, the heart, respiration, digestion (appropriately called "From Taste to Waste"), reproduction, seeing and hearing, bones and muscles, and disease defenses. All of these are beautifully illustrated and annotated with labels and side bars.

The back of the book features a full-size pop-up body poster. Several of the items "pop-up" when the poster is unfolded. These include:
• rib cage with the lungs, heart, and diaphragm underneath
• moveable arms that reveal bones
• moveable lower leg that shows muscular details and flips up to reveal bones
• foldable intestines that reveal kidneys and pelvic bones, arteries, and veins

The poster itself is well labelled and contains lots of additional information about the body and the featured parts. It's relatively pretty well made with heavy-weight poster stock and should last quite a long time providing that extra care is taken when folding and unfolding the sections.

The back of the poster is loaded with additional information on the main body systems: respiratory, digestive, cardiovascular, muscular, and skeletal.

Although I enjoyed the book, I admit I was a little disappointed with it. Instead of one large pop-up, I expected (and probably would have preferred) several smaller ones. While the poster is amazing, it is a little hard, actually make that impossible, to unfold it while sitting in a chair reading. It's just too large and unwieldy. You actually have to put the book on a large hard surface (a table or the floor) to unfold the poster. Additionally, I think it might be too cumbersome for younger readers and or those who are refolding-challenged. I still think it's pretty cool, though.

The book has an adequate table of contents, a pretty good glossary, and an extensive index for a book this size.

Recommended. All and all there's a lot of information packed into this relatively short book.

For more information about this book or to browse inside, please visit DK's website.

I'd like to thank Chris at DK Canada for this review copy.

The Incredible Pop-Up Body Book by Richard Walker, Dorling Kindersley (DK), ©2011. ISBN 9780756686963(Hardcover), 28p.