Students can learn about idioms from this book and make silly phrases such as “I think have lost my mind”. They can learn about certain body parts and the odd features of each body part.

I think 1st grade and 2nd-grade students would enjoy it for the silly writing and the funny illustrations. I also like the background drawings like the toys (in the kids’ imagination) reacting to the kid experiencing something wacky from each body part. What caught my attention were the illustrations when the boy starts making predictions like peeling his skin to show a full skeleton body on the next page.

But his parents tell him not to worry about all that. He starts having scary imaginations of his parts coming off and is afraid the more he messes with his body the more he will fall apart. Parts by Tedd Arnold is a fictional picture book that tells the story of a young boy who finds out unique things about his body such as hair coming out from a comb and stuffing in his belly button. When I was little, I found a series of books containing silly images and idioms. I would recommend this book to children ages five and up since the vocabulary is simple enough, but I must warn about the gross content in this book for children who do not like gross material. “Parts” is a brilliant children’s book about how young children explore their bodies and try to figure out what is happening to them as they get older and this book is great fun for the entire family to enjoy. The illustrations that are the true highlights in this book are the illustrations of the boy imagining that each of his body parts are falling apart, especially of the image where he thinks that his stuffing is coming out of him when he finds a piece of fuzz in his belly button. Also, Tedd Arnold’s illustrations are humorous since he portrays the boy as a bug-eyed kid with a large head and no neck (as seen on the cover of the book).

Tedd Arnold creatively extends on how children feel like the world is coming to an end when strange stuff start happening to their body and this boy (remember he is only five years old) and how parents usually makes things better by explaining the situation to their child in a calm manner, such as the boy’s parents explaining to the boy that everything happening to him is perfectly normal. Tedd Arnold has done a great job in writing the boy’s woes in a rhyming text, which makes this story even more humorous and reassuring. This book was voted Best Children’s Book for Parents Magazine and it richly deserves that honor as it is surely a children’s classic. This book is about how a young boy starts to panic when weird things start to happen to his body. “Parts” is a wonderful book about body exploration from the mind of the creator of “Green Wilma,” Tedd Arnold.

Even More Parts by Tedd Arnold