Fabulous Books Published in 2010: BONES

Steve Jenkins's Bones, Skeletons and How They Work is a refreshing new nonfiction book published this year. Jenkins dives head first (literally) into uncovering a world of bones. He shows his audience the wide variety of bones through his gorgeous cut paper collages. He strategically places bones of different animals side by side to show the huge differences bones can have. Soaring through the world of bones, Jenkins starts with a brief description of "Bones, Bones, Bones". He then begins to trace the human skeleton starting with bones in the hands, arms, feet, legs, ribs, back, neck, and all the way to head, showing how they all essentially work together to help us perform everyday activities. He allows his reader to learn about bones in their own bodies while being able to compare it to the bones in other animals.

He creatively titles each section of the book which helps key the reader in on what he is writing about but still leaving room for the reader to interact with the book and have fun. Some of the illustrations are shown in actual sizes and others are shown two times the actual size or even one-seventh of the actual size. It really allows you to be able to think about the wide range of sizes bones come in! You can even compare your own hand to the bones of the hand that is shown in this book!

Jenkins crafted a beautiful cover jacket for this book. It is a nice deep red that will surely capture your attention with a life size skull on the front and a full human skeleton running away in the back. The front part of the jacket gives a brief description of bones and the back part of the jacket tells you a little bit about Steve Jenkins. The cover page and the end page brilliantly wraps up the whole book. Instead of just telling you about bones, he really takes you on an adventure of the skeleton! For the text inside the book, he uses a white font with dark rich colors in the background that really makes the words pop. It works so well with the topic of bones that it really just helps unify the text and the illustrations. The text and the illustrations complement each other in the sense that it both enhances the overall effect on the reader. Jenkins purposefully ends the book with a few pages that allows the reader to find out even more about bones. As he ends his adventure of discovering the skeleton and its functions with the reader, he provides some facts, stories, history, and science about bones to help satisfy the reader’s craving for more information about bones. It is indeed very interesting and now I feel like I know more about bones than I have ever before!

If you want to know everything you need to know about bones in just five minutes AND have fun doing it, pick up Bones, Skeletons and How They Work by Steve Jenkins and you will surely be b(l)one away!

To find out more about Steve Jenkins and his other books, check out his website: http://www.stevejenkinsbooks.com/

HAPPY READING!

Betty Sat