Thinking about THINKING! Your Fantastic Elastic Brain by Jo Ann Deak

Growing up, we think a lot about our bodies. Are we growing fast? Will we be too tall, or too short? Are our feet too big? Can we catch that ball? Can we run fast?

But most of us don't give any thought to what that stuff between our ears really does, besides holding up our hats!

But the brain is hard at work all the time, even when we are asleep.

The brain does all the things that make you YOU!

Jo Ann Deak's Your Fantastic Elastic Brain: Stretch It, Shape It (Sourcebooks/Little Pickle, 2017) introduces young readers to their amazing brains, what they look like, what they do, their parts and how they work together to make you be YOU. Author Deak describes the location and role of the parts of the brain--cerebrum, hippocampus, amygdalla, cerebellum, and the all-important prefrontal cortex, that center that monitors how you are doing and what to do next, and explains what to do to exercise the brain.

And you can make your brain do even more. Your brain's growing very fast during the first ten years of life. This is The Magic Decade.

Like lifting weights, learning new things strengthens your brain. Learning something new causes the brain to grow more connection among the neurons, and these connections help to increase the power of the brain, making it more "elastic" so it can hold more information. You are a neuro sculptor!

Explaining the human brain offers primary students an opportunity to stretch their own brains, teaching some vocabulary and encouraging young readers to understand that having new experiences and learning new information builds better brains. After all...

The brain is the most important part of the body!