• Age: 8 to 12
• Grade: 3 to 7
• Reading age: 8 to 12

Your body sports more hair than a gorilla. About 600 different species of bacteria are living in your mouth. Your head is full of holes. Back when you were a two-month-old embryo, you had a tail. Face it --- you are weird!

All these wonderfully weird body features make us human. They also show that we're part of an animal kingdom whose members share a lot more than the same planet. This book tackles those weird questions that everyone's curious about but nobody seems able to answer. What does your appendix do? What exactly are goose bumps and why do we get them? Why can some people wiggle their ears? You Are Weird answers these questions plus many more, backing up answers with the latest scientific theories. Take a guided tour around our oddball organs and freaky body functions that make us who we are --- wacky, wonderful and weird, weird, weird.

Diane Swanson has been researching and writing nature books for children for over 25 years. Her work has been recognized with many awards, including the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children. Her titles have been regularly selected for the “our choice” list by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. A frequent guest speaker at conferences on nature for kids, she lives in Victoria, B.C.

Diane Swanson's profile page

Kathy Boake is an illustrator and fine artist. Her work has appeared in many publications, such as InStyle, Seventeen, Vancouver, Toronto Life, Outside, Chirp, Chickadee, and Owl magazines. She has won numerous awards from the Art Directors Club of Canada, the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, and the Western and National Magazine Awards Foundations. She has also illustrated several books, including You Are Weird by Diane Swanson and Chitchat: Celebrating the World’s Languages with Jude Isabella. Kathy lives in White Rock, British Columbia, Canada.

Kathy Boake's profile page

• Short-listed, Silver Birch, Ontario Library Association
• Winner, Best Books for Kids & Teens, Canadian Children's Book Centre
• Short-listed, Hackmatack Award
• Short-listed, Information Book Award, Children's Literature Roundtables of Canada

You Are Weird: Your Body’s Peculiar Parts and Funny Functions

You Are Weird: Your Body’s Peculiar Parts and Funny Functions is a wonderful text loaded with fascinating information and full of freaky facts to keep any reader engaged. Diane Swanson’s writing is a perfect blend of factual information and witty language that will appeal to a variety of readers. Swanson covers the weird and wacky parts of the human body such as skin, hair, teeth, muscles and many more.

Kathy Boake’s quirky, stylistic illustrations add to the humour of the writing and feature excellent and understandable diagrams to help deepen the reader’s understanding.

The text provides the reader with captivating information about the human body and human organ systems, while keeping the reader delightfully entertained. The humour and tone of this book provide an excellent hook to get children interested in the many odd and strange functions of the human body. An informative read that offers a great deal of valuable information in a fun and inventive manner.

You Are Weird: Your Body’s Peculiar Parts and Funny Functions

Wonderfully weird body features make us human. They also show that we’re part of an animal kingdom whose members share a lot more than the same planet. Swanson leads us on a guided tour around our oddball organs and freaky bodily functions that make us who we are — wacky, wonderful and weird, weird, weird.