I received two e-books from Library Thing Early Reviews, both anatomy coloring books. This review posed a bit of a challenge: how I would color an e-book. I found a free PDF editor, XODO, which has many drawing colors and highlighter colors to choose from, and was able to color with my stylus. Though not the same joy as crayons or pencils on paper, it made it possible to color without having to print out the pages.

Why I picked it up:
I received a free e-book version of Human Anatomy and Physiology Coloring Book (amazon associate link) by Dr. Fanatomy from the publisher through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.

Intended Audience: In the stamp on the title page it says” Fun activities for medicos.” I doubt medicos it is meant to be the Spanish word for doctors, but more the slang term for physicians, medical students, and others interested in medicine. In the disclaimer on the copyright page, it states that this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. So I would say it is intended for people who find learning about human anatomy entertaining.

My Expectations:

I’ve wanted an anatomy reference book for some time, and thought anatomy coloring books looked fun and useful. For my purposes, I look at it as a reference book for my writing. If my characters get hurt, I can look up a specific term for the location of their injuries. Or if I create a hypochondriac, he or she can think they have pain or damage to all the things on these pages. If I want to be more specific in my poetry, instead of talking about an aching heart, I can talk about a specific part.

What I liked: I like the way that the book is organized by systems, giving a diagram of the whole system and then looking closer at its parts. The opening organ systems chart is an informative, and interesting chart of what you’ll find in the book. I also like the terminology charts in Appendix 1 and 2, but think they should be at the beginning of the book instead of appendices. I like the specific, detailed diagrams like the knee, the hip, and the heart. Those were the kinds of references, I was hoping for when I picked this up I appreciated having the PDF so I could enlarge the images of the diagrams, otherwise I think they would have been too small. I did learn a few things (like I don’t know much about lymph nodes), and I had fun trying to color with my stylus on my tablet.

What I didn’t like: I didn’t enjoy some of the design choice: I’m not a fan of the cover. I think it’s the use of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man that makes it look like a kid’s cut an paste project. I thought the background pattern on the pages didn’t add, but distracted from the text. I didn’t like the font chosen for the titles. Consistency in fonts would have been more professional looking. I did NOT like the first coloring page of Andreas Vesalius with the poor dog in the background. And there were some bad typos.

Though I enjoyed the format of the book over all, I thought the note lines on the diagram pages took up too much space when the diagrams needed the whole page, Instead of instructing over and over to assign different colors to the different structures, more information about the anatomy would have been appreciated. On the Skull diagram, for example, there isn’t enough information. It lists “Frontal,” “Temporal,” and “Parietal.” Are these bones, or parts of one bone? And “Zygomatic” and “Sphenoid” and “Ethmoid” what? I’m afraid I didn’t find that diagram very educational. But if I want to know more than just terms or names, I’ll have to look it up on the internet anyway.

Overall, I had fun figuring out how to use my tablet as a coloring book, and it’s fun to color lymph node diagrams, and the digestion process, but I wasn’t a fan of the design or the typos.

Rating: ♦♦▾ 2½ out of 5

Why I picked it up:
I received a free e-book version of Human Anatomy and Neuroanatomy Coloring Book with Facts & MCQ’s (amazon associate link) by Dr. Fanatomy from the publisher through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.

My Expectations:

I was excited to review this book, since I took neuroanatomy in graduate school.

Intended audience: The neuroanatomy addition to the book, appears to be intended for those with photographic memory and a good understanding of neuroanatomy to begin with.

What I liked: I was excited to see that the second part for the brain anatomy didn’t have the design issues of the first, but it still had the repetitive instructions and absolutely no information at all, only numbered lists of names that correlated to numbers on the diagram.

What I didn’t like: I don’t like the cover, except for the colored heart.Though I like the look of the pages, and I’ll probably spend some time coloring the detailed diagrams, there’s very little useful information for anyone who doesn’t already have a working knowledge of neuroanatomy. And even then, it doesn’t provide anything but names and arrows. I found the arteries diagram odd, like there were a couple golf tees shoved in that brain.

Overall, the first part of the book was the exact duplicate of the book I reviewed first, flaws and all. The second part, the neuroanatomy section got rid of many of the design issues I didn’t like in the first part, but also provided absolutely no information except names. Though I like the clarity of the coloring book aspect, some of the diagrams aren’t clear, and there isn’t much to learn just memorizing names.

Rating: ♦♦▾ 2½ out of 5

So it looks like I have plenty of body parts to color badly, since I can’t really control where the color goes with my stylus very well. Maybe I’ll expand the images and finger paint. The images are kind of fun to color, though not as educational or useful as references as I had hoped.

Happy Reading and Writing!