Book Review: There's a Zoo in My Poo by Prof. Felice Jacka

There's a Zoo in My Poo

by

Professor Felice Jacka

Illustrated by Rob Craw

 

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia

Publication date: 28th July 2020

Genre: Children's / Non Fiction

Pages: 64

RRP: $24.99 AUD

Format read: Hardcover

Source: Courtesy of the publisher

About the book:

There's a Zoo in your Poo!
It needs a Zookeeper
And that Keeper is YOU! 

Did you know that trillions of tiny bugs live in and on all of us? And there's a Zoo of bugs in our poo. But which are the good bugs and which are the bad? What should we eat to keep our good bugs happy and our body strong?

Get to the guts of what you need to know about you and your poo.

Professor Felice Jacka is a world expert in the field of Nutritional Psychiatry and gut health. Teacher and musician Rob Craw is a world expert at drawing bugs!

They want kids to know all about the amazing stuff going on in their bodies.

Get ready for a journey inside the most exciting of places ... YOU! 

My review: 

It’s no secret that kids love books about bodily functions. There are a plethora of books to choose from about poos and farts. These books tend to be more fun than educational emphasising the fact that poos and farts are a normal part of life.

Professor Felice Jacka goes a whole lot further with her educational and fun children’s book There’s a Zoo in My Poo to explain gut health with zany illustrations and catchy rhymes. The book tells us all about the bugs that live in our gut, both good and bad, the food that we eat and the effect it has on these bugs, what the good bugs feed on, healthy food for a healthy body and brain.

 

Six year old Dot really enjoyed the concept of being the zookeeper of her body and once I explained that the bugs inside your body aren’t like insect type bugs but tiny invisible bugs you can’t see, she was much more receptive to the idea of how they lived inside you.

 

There is quite a lot of information in this 64 page book and I found it better to concentrate on a small area of the book at a time. The catchy rhyming poems were a great feeder into the more in-depth ins and outs of the workings of the gastrointestinal tract.

 

I knew the book was having some effect when Dot was asking me if the food she was eating was feeding her good bugs or bad bugs. That’s a win!

 

There’s a Zoo in My Poo focuses on the principles of gut health with colourful microbes and entertaining prose making this complex topic easier for children, and adults, to understand. gut health is an important topic and you can never start too young to teach children about healthy eating. It is great to see a children’s book addressing the ‘why’ of healthy eating. It’s a book that can be pulled out whenever your children’s eating habits go off track.

Read together from 6+

 

Read alone from 8+

⭐⭐⭐⭐ from Dot

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐from me

About the author: 

Professor Felice Jacka is an international expert in the field of Nutritional Psychiatry and gut health and leads a research field examining how individuals' diets affect mental and brain health.

About the illustrator:

Rob Craw is a teacher, musician, and illustrator, who shares Jacka's passion for educating everyone, especially kids, about the importance of healthy eating.

 

This review is part of the Book Lover Book Review Aussie author challenge

  the Australian Women Writers challenge  and the Non Fiction reader challenge