The Gland Factory: A Tour of Your Body’s Goops, Juices, and Hormones

Gr 4-8–Feeling hungry, nervous, or sweaty? That means your endocrine and exocrine systems—aka your glands—are at work. Poliquin and Hanmer invite readers on a guided tour of the human body, reimagined as a well-oiled machine powered by a gland factory. A cadre of hard-hatted, bean-shaped comical characters including a boss, a deputy, and myriad workers, run the factory and dole out messenger glands (the exocrine system) and “goop” glands (the endocrine system). Chapters have humorous titles like The Mouth Machine (describing the salivary glands) and The Snot Shower (covering the nasal glands), while the chapter No Pee-Pee Hormone describes how the hypothalamus and pituitary gland work to deliver the anti-diuretic hormone (in charge of stopping urination during sleep, among other things) to the kidneys. Throughout the factory are the ever-present graffiti-tagging germs trying to infiltrate the building. At one point they successfully invade the digestive system, and the thymus gland springs into action and sends fighter T-cells to contain the germs. Both text and illustrations are playful and work seamlessly together to explain complicated concepts.