Get Moving: Tips on Exercise

Children's Literature

This informational book clearly defines fitness and muscle strength and introduces the reasons for exercise. Tips on nutrition and hydration supplement the remarks on exercise. Material is well-presented through information bites, excellent graphics including an exercise pyramid, and a short glossary as well as on-page definitions for important words. Readers can take a self-check for fitness by following instructions for doing sit-ups correctly. This book is a useful supplement to school curriculum on physical education and science. Whether children actively look for this type of self-help book is questionable, but if parents or teachers introduce it, the brightly colored graphics and photographs of active children make the book appealing. The kid-focused Internet sites listed offer guidelines to specific exercises for strength and flexibility and further information on fitness. 2002, Capstone Press,
— Elisabeth Greenberg

School Library Journal

K-Gr 3-Two simply written titles that explain very briefly why exercise and getting enough sleep are important for children. Each spread has a full-color photograph that faces about four or five sentences of text. Moving has an activity pyramid and also discusses good nutrition. Sleep has a diagram of the sleep cycle and a discussion of somnambulism and nightmares. A "Guess What?" feature gives additional tidbits of information. In Moving, the "Hands On" feature suggests a fitness test and in Sleep, keeping a dream diary. Angela Royston's A Healthy Body (Heinemann Library, 1999) has a different activity pyramid and doesn't discuss nutrition. The emphasis in Susan Kent's Let's Talk about When You Have Trouble Going to Sleep (Rosen, 2000) is more specific.-Martha Gordon, formerly at South Salem Library, NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.