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The Icky, Sticky Snot and Blood Book by Steve Alton, Nick Sharratt and Jo Moore, one of the 6 shortlisted books up for the Royal Society’s Young People’s Book Award, was torn out of my hands as soon as I unwrapped it.
The frontcover has a big globule of squishy snot dribbling down it, all the illustrations are done by the instantly recognisable and widely loved Nick Sharratt, and the book is full of crazy, impressive, sometimes slightly icky pop-ups. You can see how this would appeal to a lot of children!
Under a cloak of grossness Steve Alton has snuck in a great deal of information about breathing, blood and bogeys. You can learn what bogeys are made of (and why it’s not a great idea to eat them), what pus is made from, and how far across the room your heart could squirt blood if you were to cut the main artery from it.
Yep, this book isn’t for the very squeamish (though many kids seem to enjoy being “squeemed” a little) but it’s exactly the sort of book I’d offer to reluctant readers or thrill seekers: Like a breathtaking fairground ride The Icky, Sticky Snot and Blood Book zooms along making your stomach squirm, inducing oohs and aahs and is lots of fun (if you like that sort of thing).
My girls certainly did enjoy this rollercoaster of a read, but if I’m being pernickity and trying to find a reason to rank it higher or lower any other book shortlisted for the Royal Society’s Young People’s Book Award it would be the paper engineering.
The pop-ups, flaps and tabs are great fun, but a few of them make reading the text rather difficult (for example, you have to half shut the book to read the text hidden behind the pop-out body) and whilst they’re all enjoyable, I don’t think they are all as clever as many of them are in the other pop-up book shortlisted for this prize, How the World Works. Rather than adding to the understanding of the issue being explored some are included for pure enjoyment purposes (for example the pop-up amusement park at the end). Fun and pleasure is no bad thing, but if the pop-up engineering can be informative as well as eyecatching so much the better.
Don’t get me wrong, The Icky, Sticky Snot and Blood Book is a super book, that will grab everyone’s attention. It’s informative, funny and just a little bit disgusting. This science b
I love that book! and we love goo! Have you seen our glow in the dark version? x
We love this book too. Have you seen the companion The Gooey, Chewy, Rumble, Plop Book about the digestive system? Lots of urgh! potential there. It seems to be out of print – we had it out from the library a while back – but well worth finding.
Hi Katy, yes we’ve seen ours from the library too, but unfortunately pop up books don’t tend to fare well in libraries it seemed so quite a lot wasn’t working, But yes, and excellent companion to the snot book!