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Review - Biology: life as we know it - Dan Green

Elsewhere on this site there are some books described as being a bit like marmite - you will either love them or hate them. The same applies very much to this book. It's in a tiny format, around 13 centimetres square and consists of a series of pairs of pages with text on the left hand side and Japanese style highly coloured illustrations (by Simon Basher) on the right.

Biology is split up into seven main sections - building blocks, life, body bits and green shoots. Most of the pages feature some aspect of biology from DNA to insects, from teeth to leaves. Each of these aspects is given a personality, with the text in the first person, unpleasantly like something you might hear on a computer dating site (or page 3 of the Sun) - DNA, for example proclaims 'Some think I'm a twisted individual, but while my slinky curves turn heads, I'm actually quite a bookish character.' Each page also has little factoids at the bottom.

Like its relative Physics, he book has to be given full marks for originality, and being of the marmite persuasion I suspect will really appeal to some. Unfortunately, I come down on the other side of the balance. The first problem I have is the age range. It says it's aimed at 10+, and that's certainly right for the topics covered (the bumf suggests it's for key stage 3 and 4 - that's up to 15/16), but I would imagine most teenagers would wince at its winsomely cheerful personalities and overblown attempt to sound hip.

Then there's the format. Not only is half the content wasted on pictures that really don't provide any useful information, the text is so busy trying to make mitochondria sound as if they're your best mates that it forgets to actually tell you much about the topic. Sometimes it's so vague in the attempt to sound cool that you have to know what it's talking about already to understand what it means. It's a bit like the subtitle, which most primary school teachers are probably too young to get the reference to, let alone children. There are tiny nuggets of fact - and some of them may stick thanks to the format - but it's far too sparse. The tiny format's the same - it makes the book cutesy but not very useful.

As this is decidely marmitey, you ought to take a look and make your own mind up. You may well love it. Sadly, I don't.

Only in paperback

Reviewed by Brian Clegg

* Our age range recommendation is an estimated guide, but individual readers outside the range could still enjoy the book!

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