UTTERLY AMAZING HUMAN BODY

A flurry of quick facts about human anatomy and development is given interactive enhancements.

In this tour of body functions—“How I eat,” “How I think,” “How I grow,” etc.—an admixture of photographed children and magnified tissue samples seldom does much to liven up the scattered, flat, schematic images of anatomical parts on view. Nor do the scanty assortment of variously shaped flaps, the pop-up rib cage, or other moving figures. Even the silhouette “I am roughly the size of a…” baby who spins from “Pea” through “Avocado” to “Watermelon” inside a silhouette woman fails to thrill. Aside from an artery wrongly labeled “dermis” in a cross-section of skin layers, the select facts are accurate enough, but the narrative text features several arguable or poorly phrased statements. For example, a description of sight begins “Light rays from an object, such as a tree, enter the eye,” and there’s a sweeping claim that the brain “is the most complex thing in the living world.”

Perfunctory to simplistic in content and anemic in special features, this effort is “roughly the size” of an also-ran in a field crowded with better surveys.