Fluidoteca is an illustrated book aimed at younger readers. Its focus is on the scientific explanation of bodily functions. The tone is appealing, amusing, with lots of comic humour, but that doesn’t detract from its scientific rigour. The humour is generally quite ‘rude’ in nature, a rudeness that forms a natural part of the universe of young children, and is one of the key elements that helps hook the reader.
The book is divided into eight sections that deal with bodily fluids and how the different organs related to their excretion work: stomach, intestines, eyes, skin, kidneys, salivary glands, respiratory tracts and heart.
The book begins with a section that explains the nature of bodily fluids and why water is so important for our bodies. Then each section focuses on a specific fluid: faeces, tears, sweat, mucus, saliva and blood. As well as explaining their characteristics- colour, texture, smell etc.- it also explains simply but accurately how the different organs associated with each of the fluids function and how the latter are created. Similarly, it describes how physiological responses generated by our bodies can be related to our state of mind: fear that makes us sweat; sadness or happiness that make us cry etc. In this respect it usefully points out the physiological basis to some of our behaviour.
The illustrations are entertaining, extremely modern, original and pedagogical. The author uses simple lines and a chromatic scale of plain colours. She plays with colour and associates the different fluids and their corresponding hues with one colour: brown for faeces and the digestive system; blue for tears and eyes; green for mucus and the respiratory tracts; yellow for urine and the kidneys; light blue for saliva and the mouth; red for blood and the heart; turquoise for sweat and the skin. She uses grey for water. There is then a single colour in each section, together with black and white, and it is visually striking.
Although in principle the books seems to be recommended for children between 0 and 5 years old, I think it should really be aimed at older readers, perhaps between 5 and 10 years old, given the complex nature of understanding how our body and organs work and the scientific nature of the vocabulary used, even though the terms used are explained simply and accurately in an appealing, instructive manner. In my view, Fluidoteca is an engaging, attractive, original book that could help arouse and develop an interest in scientific knowledge and thinking among young English readers.
The book doesn’t present great challenges to the translator. The only feature worth noting is the use of everyday children’s language (poo, pee, snot) together with specifically scientific language (salivary glands, canaliculi, nostrils) that may require a little research on the part of the translator; they hardly constitute an insuperable translation problem.
Peter Bush
