Another “help me find a childhood book” question...
August 23, 2016 12:15 PM   Subscribe

I'm trying to remember a book that was a gift from my aunt, a nurse, around 1980-ish. Target audience, probably 8-10 year olds. It was about how the body works, but it was a sort of eclectic bunch of anecdotes, stories, and facts, each one a page or maybe two-page spread.

I remember a section on yoga, a story about how researchers put a glass viewport on a cow’s digestive system, and a story about a railroad worker who survived a tie being driven through his head. Illustrations were pen and ink and reminded me of Shel Silverstein’s style. It was a large book, maybe 10”x12”, around ¾” thick. My copy was paperback, and the cover was a pale mustard yellow (close to that institutional shade of yellow).
posted by Kriesa to Grab Bag (6 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Seconding Blood and Guts. It was awesome.
posted by goggie at 12:49 PM on August 23, 2016


You can see the original cover down the page here
posted by goggie at 12:51 PM on August 23, 2016


I'm looking at my copy of Blood and Guts and don't see anything about Phineas T. Gage - the guy with the railroad spike in his brain - or cows with viewports or yoga. I'd say it's another book, but no idea what.
posted by bendy at 4:54 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think I had this book—did the drawing of Phineas Gage depict the very moment of the pipe blasting through his skull, in a fairly humorous way? Unfortunately that's all I can recall about it, other than a spread about the number of bones in your body. (I think a skeleton was standing on a scale that said 206, to represent the bone count, which I understood even then was misleading.)
posted by ejs at 5:13 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Yes, that's the one, ejs!

I think Blood and Guts would have been right up my alley, but it's not it.
posted by Kriesa at 7:16 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sorry I couldn't be more helpful! Now I'm curious to learn the title too!
posted by ejs at 8:31 PM on August 23, 2016


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