December 16, 2024

The Inside Scouts Help the Strong Cheetah

Written by Mitali Banerjee Ruths
Illustrated by Francesca Mahaney
Acorn (Scholastic)
978-1-338-89504-9
64 pp.
Ages 5-7
October 2024
 
Our intrepid inside-the-body explorers from The Inside Scouts Help the Kind Lion and The Inside Scouts Help the Brave Giraffe are back to help another animal with a body ailment.
From The Inside Scouts Help the Strong Cheetah, written by Mitali Banerjee Ruths, illustrated by Francesca Mahaney
Sanjay and Viv, the children who can shrink down and go inside animals to help them feel better, discover that the cheetah has a leg cramp. Explaining it as a muscle that is stuck and will not relax, the two grab their gear and head out to meet Zora the cheetah. Zora explains how she'd been running when her leg started to hurt, and she had to stop. (This may be familiar to many young readers.) They carry her to their Care Lab and head inside Zora for a "little poke."
From The Inside Scouts Help the Strong Cheetah, written by Mitali Banerjee Ruths, illustrated by Francesca Mahaney
Inside Zora, Sanjay and Viv pass through the fur, the skin and into the muscle, all appropriately depicted. The kids reach the muscle, described as made of bigger and smaller ropes and surrounded by a sleeve (connective tissue), and locate where the ropes are bunched up i.e., the cramp. With the help of a few nifty tools, they repair the muscle and head out. As a pain-free Zora returns to the wild, they advise her to rest, and stay hydrated.
From The Inside Scouts Help the Strong Cheetah, written by Mitali Banerjee Ruths, illustrated by Francesca Mahaney
With a couple of information pages called "Fun Facts about Muscles," describing how muscles work in our bodies, including the use of terms like skeletal muscles, fibers and connective tissue, Mitali Banerjee Ruths informs while telling a sweet story about kids who help others. She's got a great blend of animals, kids, compassion and STEM to make the Inside Scouts a valuable and charming addition to Acorn's early reader books. And by focusing on an injury or ailment that any child might experience, some common and others less so, Mitali Banerjee Ruths's Inside Scouts will help kids understand and be comforted.
From The Inside Scouts Help the Strong Cheetah, written by Mitali Banerjee Ruths, illustrated by Francesca Mahaney
The illustrations by New England's Francesca Mahaney have the right chemistry of biology and art. She keeps her shapes bold and distinct and surprisingly defined as necessary for a book that looks at the body structures. As a primer for health and the body, The Inside Scouts Help the Strong Cheetah shows the strong collaboration between Francesca Mahaney's art and the story of Mitali Banerjee Ruths, working like the body itself: distinct parts supporting and integrating.
 
I don't know if there will be more books in the series but, with plenty of injuries and body functions to delve into, the Inside Scouts would have heaps of helping to do. And by helping an assortment of animals, Sanjay and Viv are helping young children understand their own bodies and what can go wrong without taking them into circumstances like hospitals and doctors' offices which have the potential to cause anxiety. With these characters just trying to do good and using fabulous tech to do it, children get a playful but informative look at their own bodies.
 
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The Inside Scouts Help the Strong Cheetah (2024)

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