This graphically appealing, colorful, and fact-rich "story" describes the importance of food to the body by following an apple as it goes through the human digestion system. While there is no index, it is fairly easy to find information on each stage of digestion, from eating, saliva production, and movement through the esophagus, stomach, and intestines to the happy ending. Abundant, humorous cartoons and clever text handle explanations of belching, passing gas, and diarrhea. This picture book would be useful for reports, but it's more for general interest.

This is a well-illustrated book that both kids and adults will enjoy. The Quest to Digest is an easy, fun, interesting, accessible, entertaining account of the digestive process. The funny and witty illustrations are very useful and effective at conveying a complex idea to a child. For example, the brain is portrayed as a sergeant commanding his "troops," the salivary glands, to start secreting when the brain smells or thinks about food. Another concept that can be tricky to explain to students of any age is cellular respiration, but author Mary Corcoran does an admirable job with this topic in just a few sentences, a truly remarkable feat. The book has a clear glossary with definitions and pronunciations of the various terms used; however, pronunciations would be useful within the main text. Also, terms such as "enzyme" and "trachea" are used without lay explanations and thus may be confusing to kids if they don't look them up in the glossary. A minor problem with the anatomy illustrations is that the common bile duct is not shown to be connected to the duodenum. The information in the book is really boiled down and presented in a fun, kid-friendly way. Adults can learn a ton from this as well. This wonderful book is an anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology lesson, in addition to a fun read!

The Quest to Digest presents the human digestion process from start to finish in a funny yet factual manner. As my children sat on the couch reading to each other, you could see the information was being "digested" as they laughed and smiled. It has been proven that we learn better when we are enjoying the learning process. When I asked probing questions after the reading, both children were able to answer--plus they elaborated and giggled some more.