Unless you are an extremely rare human being, you can probably quickly identify a person in your life, probably a boy, who is fascinated by bodily functions. If this person is seventeen or seventy-seven, there is no help for them. But if they are between the ages of four and twelve, it is not yet too late to help them blossom into a non-flatulence-obsessed member of adult society who will offer only a halfhearted chuckle over the late comedies of Eddie Murphy before their mind wanders on to more interesting things.

You Are Weird: Your Body's Peculiar Parts and Funny Functions is the fart-lover' passage into the more fascinating areas of biological study. It took a hardcover-to-hardcover reading of Diane Swanson's lovely book of scientific factoid and fact to prove to myself that there was actually no section on any of Chaucer's favorite sources of comic relief, despite two-page sections with titles like "Leaky Body" (how and why we sweat), "Dead-End Tube" (the appendix), and "Holes in Your Head" (sinuses); the closest we get to anything so scandalous is "Claws!", a section about fingernails that includes the timeless tale of that man from the Guinness Book of World Records with nails like distended watch springs. Well-illustrated, well-organized, and well-researched, You Are Weird features food for thought for adults as well as children, delving into topics of evolutionary biology like why we have too many teeth or what more highly evolved future humans might look like (maybe they'll write with their feet!) and making breezy comparisons between goosebumps and shorthairs, canine teeth and tusks, that will teach the scatologically obsessed that there are things more exotic than the bad smells our bodies make.

You can pick up You Are Weird on Amazon for around $14. - Jeremiah

Wendy Pfeffer's A Log's Life is a really, really lovely book. Her illustrations blend three-dimensional papercraft with natural textures that reach towards the hyper-real, and assist in evoking a never-explicit ecological/philosophical point from a "long view" of the myriad purposes to be found in the life, death, and decay of a tree. It's lyrical, epic, and naturalistic, all in the same breath, and is a pleasure to read to young children, who will be captivated both by the many uses nature finds for a single plant and the long-tail fecundity of a thing that has died.

Wood-boring beetles burrow under the bark,
chewing wood and
leaving tunnels.
Water and air seep into the tunnels.

Toadstools and other fungi
such as mildew, molds,
and mushrooms
sprout in these damp places.

Slugs and snails crawl
up the tree trunk
into the tunnels
and eat the fungi

There really isn't a more beautiful introduction to life cycles, food webs, and ecological niches than this lovely book. At under $7, it's a ridiculous bargain, and one of those books we're likely to keep on hand in multiples for last-minute gifts. - Jeremiah

A Mirror to Nature: Poems About Reflection combines the stunning photography of Jason Stemple with simple, accessible poems by Jane Yolen. Focused on nature and water, the photographs are visual poetry in themselves and lend themselves readily to discussion with children about reflections, water, nature and animals.

Yolen's poetry reflects (pun intended) the images in the photographs, in tones varying from somber and thoughtful to light and humorous. I've enjoyed showing the photographs to Z, reading her the poems, and watching her discover which part is the animal and which part is the reflection. I didn't realize before reading this book that Z wasn't really literate in reflections and she surprised me when she pointed out what she thought were two animals in a photo of a solitary animal and its reflection. I explained to her the reflection and she was thrilled to find the reflections in the other photos.

A Mirror to Nature is available on Amazon.com for about $14. - Jeremiah

Deborah Hodge's Who Lives Here? series of animal books explores a variety of habitats - polar tundra, rainforest, desert, savannah, forest, and wetland among them - with bright, detailed, and realistic illustrations, pairing scenes of animals in action with spotlight images showcasing behaviors, adaptations, or closeups of physical characteristics that help animals survive and thrive in niche environments.

Unlike many reference-type books we've seen for young children, the format here doesn't overwhelm with information, offering a simple pattern of insights rather than a collage of many facts; I'm not sure if this desire is general to the age group, but our daughter (age 4.5) loves browsing fiction books (Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, for example) but has a hard time with similarly organized nonfiction, where she appears impatient for story elements; simple books like this allow us to move through a subject in a way that seems to spur focus and conversation as we discuss and reflect on animals and their environments.

Based on this personal experience, I'd say this book is thus very well-suited for the youngest naturalists, especially children from ages 3-6 or so, who do not want a large field of information to browse but a clear path for reading. They are also less lengthy than some other science and nature series we enjoy, notably the excellent "Let's Read and Find Out Science" series, and both retail at about $6 per volume; depending on your child's appetite and attention span, this commitment to simplicity may be a benefit or a drawback, and is probably best viewed as a precursor to, or break from, more challenging and in-depth books offered for the same age group.

You can pick up volumes from the Who Lives Here? series on Amazon.com. Both they and the Let's Read and Find Out Science books (we'll highlight a few of our favorites from that series here soon) are eligible for Amazon's 4-for-3 promotion. - Jeremiah

Ile Aux Canards Coral Reef Noumea in Noumea

For a truly surreal experience, Right-click on the panorama and select "little planet" view for a truly awesome and surreal perspective on things. Then click and drag from the edge to the center to swap which part of the show - the reef or the water - is the "planet."

And make sure to click through using the link at the bottom of the embed to see this thing in its full-browser-window glory! [Via] - Jeremiah

Chances are, your child does not understand just how big a blue whale - the largest animal in the known universe - actually is. Chances are, you don't either. So go on a quick educational journey with them and discover a blue whale, one computer screen's worth at a time.

Above, a screen capture from my view of the blue behemoth. But that's the full view of what I was looking at on the screen - the blowhole - shrunk down to a size that would fit in this post. The actual size, if I crop instead of resize my screen capture, shows you how much of a blue whale you can see on Punnybop at one time:

ACTUAL SIZE*

Check it out with your kid, you will both be amazed!

* I think we deserve a gold star for being the first blog of 2009 to find reason to use both the "blink" tag and animated gifs. Suck it, Web 2.0! - Jeremiah