Great Health: Body and Soul

TulsaKids
Books column
January 2008

By Kelly Jennings
Children’s Collection Development Librarian
Tulsa City-County Library

The news reporters pronounce our kids unhealthy and fat. They need exercise. They watch too much TV. OK, I admit I could not resist adding the last accusation. After all, I am a librarian! However, one of the reasons some children are overweight is that they sit too much. Several authors address children’s health in recent books and DVDs.

Chicken Fat is a DVD for ages 3 to 12. The Chicken Fat Kids of the Chicken Fat Club lead children in fitness exercises while accompanied by the "Chicken Fat" song. In another DVD, the subject is hatha yoga for children. In Wai Lana's Little Yogis, a 30-minute DVD for ages 3 to 8, children pretend to be different animals, such as cobras, bears and butterflies, while stretching and strengthening their bodies and improving their balance and coordination.

Loreen Leedy introduced children to the formidable food pyramid back in the mid-1990s and has recently revised her book to incorporate the new USDA standards. Her Edible Pyramid: Good Eating Every Day is no ordinary nutrition book. Leedy uses a playful format that features a cat waiter at the Edible Pyramid restaurant recommending a healthy menu to stylish animal customers. Colorful, delicious colors make good healthy eating seem fun. Remember this Reading Rainbow book when discussing nutrition with kids.

Edward Miller gives us another book with the new food pyramid plus a monster: The Monster Health Book: A Guide to Eating Healthy, Being Active & Feeling Great for Monsters & Kids! Miller designed his book to help children develop a healthy lifestyle and included sections on exercise, drugs and self-esteem. Featuring a friendly, rotund, green monster determined to make healthy choices, this book presents basic information about food, exercise and health using lots of visual appeal plus humorous details and silly jokes.  Boxes, sidebars and lists of good Web sites provide interesting tidbits about what could have been a dry subject.

Sneeze! by Alexandra Siy and Dennis Kunkel is a fascinating look at something we all do and for various reasons. Kunkel photographs nine kids who discover nine different reasons for sneezing – from allergens and dust mites to bright light and viruses. Incredible micrographs magnify the tiny sneeze-inducing irritants, as well as human nerves and neurons for each of the different sneezes. This is book to share with kids who have allergies and cannot understand why that wonderful pet could be making them sick.

With all the experiences that Maisy has, she was bound to go to the hospital one day! In Lucy Cousins’ Maisy Goes to the Hospital, Maisy winds up in the hospital after playing on the trampoline, falling and breaking her leg. Maisy’s HMO must have authorized a very short stay, because this covers the basics of the x-ray, a cast and walking with crutches, and – no more trampolines!

I did learn something new while reading the verso page of this book. It’s always interesting to read the printing information in children’s books to learn the technical side of the children’s book business: how, what, where. This Maisy book provides notes that it “was typeset in Lucy Cousins font.” I never have seen one font dedicated to a particular illustrator before; however, all of the Maisy books do have that one characteristic font, so I guess Cousins and/or Candlewick Press has dedicated and named/copyrighted that font for Cousins and her merchandise.

Now, here are two books for parents. The first is Dr. Christopher Ryder’s Take Your Pediatrician With You: Keeping Your Child Healthy at Home and on the Road, which is an update of a book by this 25-year practicing pediatrician who has traveled widely with his own son.  Basic sections cover traveling with children, common illnesses, summer woes and accidents. Probably the most important section is how to put together your own children’s medical kit. This alone may be worth the price of the book that is published by the Johns Hopkins University Press (www.press.jhu.edu). Royalties go to the Chance Children’s Home in Johannesburg.

Great health requires great mental health and Greenspan’s new book brings it all together in a compact volume. Great Kids byDr. Stanley Greenspan, M.D., founding president of Zero to Three, is subtitled Helping Your Baby and Child Develop the 10 Essential Qualities for a Healthy, Happy Life. Greenspan discusses emotional and mental health; relating to others; the ability to care; curiosity or an inquiring mind; the power of language; emotional range, i.e., passion and balance; genuine self-esteem or self-awareness; perseverance and self-control; creativity and vision; making sense of the world; and moral integrity.

I will close using the words of Greenspan in his dedication: “This book is dedicated to the children of the world. They all have within them the potential to be great kids. It’s our job to create a great world where this potential can flourish.”

  

These books are available for checkout through the Tulsa City-County Library, www.tulsalibrary.org, 596-7977.

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