Dr Remi Kowalski (text) and Tonia Composto (illustrator) All about the Heart, Berbay, July 2023, 32 pp., RRP $25.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781922610591
This brightly coloured, attractive non-fiction book is exuberantly illustrated in shades of red, blue, black and white. Written by a leading paediatric cardiologist from Melbourne, it explains to young readers what hearts do and how they work. And not just human ones. Did you know that some animals don’t have hearts and that the blue whale has the biggest one?
Mainly, though, the text focuses on our own human hearts. From where it is to how big it is, what it does and how to look after it, the information is given in just a few sentences per page placed around the colourful, humorous illustrations by Tonia Composto. Emotions and broken hearts are mentioned along with sick hearts and hearts stopping at the end of our lives.
This is the first volume in a new series about the human body and it is a great start. The only quibble is when the text states that your heart is in the centre of your chest rather than explaining that, although placed between the lungs, it is slightly left of centre.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage
