Another “help me find a childhood book” question...

August 23, 2016 12:15 PM

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)

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

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

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

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