Argh! There’s a skeleton inside you!; Idan Ben-Barak, illustrated by Julian Frost

From the duo that created Do Not Lick This Book comes another delightful and interactive non-fiction read.

Green blob Quog and pink gas cloud Oort are excited to be heading to Kevin’s birthday. But oh no, Quog has bumped into the power switch and now their spaceship has crash landed. All will be good though, they just need to open the door and then they can fix the ship and be on their way. Or they would be if they only had a hand to open the door. Can you lend them a hand…

This is not your typical non-fiction book, it is a genius idea for making a complex concept accessible to young readers and I think it is brilliant. Argh! There’s a skeleton inside you! is a funny and light-hearted story with lots of scientific information about what is inside a hand. Quog and Oort are amazed by hands and would very much like their own, luckily Quog is able to grow some but the hands are a little bit floppy. With the help of the reader and lots of ‘handy' information about body anatomy, everyone learns about bones, muscles and nerves and their roles and how they work.

Readers find themselves regularly being asked to help out and engage with Quog and Oort. Hands are ‘scanned’ to reveal different features and then readers engage in different tasks to aid Quog and Oort’s understanding. Readers are asked to give the page a push to demonstrate bone structure, lift the book above their head to model muscles and show how nerves work by turning the page with closed eyes. It is all a great deal of fun and as Quog and Oort learn, so does the reader.

The story, that begins on the opening endpapers, is brightly illustrated and is filled with quirky humour. Quog is baffled as to why hands are full of string and meat and is shocked when the first scan of a hand reveals what is hiding beneath the skin, “Argh! There’s a skeleton inside you!”. The closing endpapers - ‘How to grow hands’ - give a more detailed explanation on the workings of the hand and arm, discreetly introducing more complex ideas and terminology.

Recommended for 5+.