The Heart: Our Circulatory System

by Seymour Simon

Overview

Describes the heart, blood, and other parts of the body's circulatory system and explains how each component functions.

Customer Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060877217
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	05/23/2006
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	132,873
Product dimensions:	9.80(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.20(d)
Age Range:	6 - 10 Years

About the Author

Seymour Simon has been called "the dean of the [children's science book] field" by the New York Times. He has written more than 250 books for young readers and has received the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Lifetime Achievement Award for his lasting contribution to children's science literature, the Science Books & Films Key Award for Excellence in Science Books, the Empire State Award for excellence in literature for young people, and the Educational Paperback Association Jeremiah Ludington Award. He and his wife, Liz, live in Great Neck, New York. You can visit him online at www.seymoursimon.com, where you can read "Seymour Science Blog" and download a free four-page teacher guide to accompany this book, putting it in context with Common Core objectives. Many of Seymour's award-winning books are also available as ebooks.

Read an Excerpt

Make a fist. This is about the size of your heart. Sixty to one hundred times every minute your heart muscles squeeze together and push blood around your body through tubes called blood vessels.

Try squeezing a rubber ball with your hand. Squeeze it hard once a second. Your hand will get tired in a minute or two. Yet your heart beats every second of every day. In one year your heart beats more than thirty million times. In an average lifetime a heart will beat over 2,000,000,000 (two thousand million) times.

The heart works hard when we relax or sleep and even harder when we work or exercise. It never stops for rest or repair. The heart is a most incredible pump.

Not all animals have hearts. There are tiny creatures in oceans and ponds that take in food and oxygen from the surrounding waters. But in humans and other mammals, most of the cells lie too deep within the body to get food and oxygen directly from the outside.

The human body is made up of hundreds of billions of microscopic cells. Your muscles, nerves, skin, and bones are all made of different kinds of cells. But every cell in your body needs food and oxygen, and your cells also need to be protected against germs that can cause disease.

Your heart, blood vessels, and blood work together to supply each of your cells with all of its needs. Every minute, the heart pushes a pulsing stream of blood through a network of blood vessels to every cell in your body. The constantly moving blood brings food and oxygen to each cell, carries away such wastes as carbon dioxide, and serves as an important component in the body's immune system. The heart, blood, and web of blood vessels make up your circulatory system.

Editorial Reviews

"'Make a fist. This is about the size of your heart." From this beginning the author captures the reader. The heart, blood, cells, the entire circulatory system discussed is the reader's own. Clear, uncluttered, but detailed and labeled drawings and computer-colored micrographs give meaning to the precise descriptions of the components and the life-sustaining functioning of this amazing biological system. These dramatic graphics, produced by a scanning electron microscope that enlarges thousands of times what the eye otherwise could not see, command the reader's attention. This book makes the miraculous river within each of us that the heart controls real and at the same time wondrous. Problems, such as blockages and damaged heart valves are explored, as well as the ways these problems may be overcome. Readers should find this book exciting, enlightening and rewarding. 1999 (orig.

Children's Literature - Margarette Reid

The circulatory system is detailed in Simon's latest addition to children's science books. The mechanics of circulation, the components of blood and the basis of heart disease are explained. The illustrations are startling images obtained by new methods of electron microscopy, ultrasound and X-ray, all with computer-enhanced color. It is these illustrations which make the book special as the text is similar to explanations available in many science books and the addition of material on blood components is somewhat out of place and superficial.

Children's Literature - Dr. Judy Rowen

Gr 3-5Simon approaches the human heart as he approached outer space and oceans: as an adventure to be explored. As always, the full-page, full-color photographs are spectacular, and the text is crisp and full of detail. In a conversational yet instructive style, the author presents young readers with fascinating information that will almost certainly spur them on to read more. Topics include types of blood vessels, coronary bypass surgery, strokes, and anatomy of the heart. There is no index, but since each two-page spread clearly addresses a specific topic, one isn't necessary.Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, NY

School Library Journal

"Make a fist. This is about the size of your heart," Simon (Spring in America, p. 232, etc.) begins, and with this simple, concrete image he introduces the wonders of the human heart, circulatory system, and blood to a picture-book audience. Elsewhere, even abstract ideas become comprehensible, e.g., the average human body contains about twenty-five trillion red blood cells, or "hundreds of times more blood cells than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy." Stunning full-color photos appear on every page, many taken inside the human body with scanners, X rays, and other devices, and then computer-enhanced. The same science savvy and enthusiasm that has made Simon's titles on the universe so popular has been turned inward to uncover extraordinary facts about the human body.

Kirkus Reviews