CHOCOLATE
"We eat plants all the time. Think of carrots, celery, broccoli, lettuce, apples, and peanuts. All these foods are parts of plants. So it shouldn't be surprising that chocolate is. But the journey from plant to chocolate candy is a long one. Here's how it begins."

EYES
"Vision is the team captain of the five senses. Hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling are important. But most humans get most of their information about the world through their eyes. The first "eyes" in nature appeared on sea animals hundreds of millions of years ago. They were just light-sensitive patches on the skin. But sensing light was so handy for survival that true vision began to. . . "

BLOOD
"Blood is a life-and-death issue. How does blood keep you alive? Every second of every day, blood delivers vital nutrients, oxygen, and other chemicals to all of your organs. It also carts away your body's waste. In addition, flowing blood can cool you off or warm you up, when necessary. Blood is also your best weapon against germs and other invaders. Your bloodstream creates microscopic defenders . . . "

BONES
"Believe it or not, you have fewer bones in your body today than on the day you were born. All of us start off with more than 300 bones, yet by the age of 20, we have only about 206. What happens in those two decades is nothing strange -some bones simply grow together to make the skeleton stronger. Our skeletons make us part of an exclusive club-the three percent of animals known as vertebrates. . . "

BRAIN
"The human brain is large and in charge. It controls everything you do -- breathing, eating, reading this sentence. Everything. Humans have the largest brain for their body size in the animal world. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, cannot perform tasks beyond those of an average toddler. What makes us so smart?"

SKIN
"Your heart, your brain, and your stomach are all organs in your body. An organ is a part of the body that does a specific job. Can you name the largest organ in your body? That right. It's the skin. . . . "

HEART
"As you read this, your heart is pumping about five quarts of blood throughout your body. The blood is traveling through more than 60,000 miles of blood vessels (arteries, veins, capillaries). That's enough to circle the equator twice, and then some! A heart works tirelessly over a lifetime. During an average life span, the heart beats three billion times without a single break. Not bad for a. . . "

MICROBES
"Billions and billions of microbes are crawling, squirming, and squiggling all over your body right now! But don't worry. Nearly 95 percent of all microbes are harmless. (Some of the other 5 percent can make you sick, so remember to wash your hands often.) Without these invisible companions, life as we know it would not exist. Animals, including humans, could not digest their food. Plants would not. . . "

MEDICINE
"Medicine is old. In the Stone Age, healing herbs and plants were used to cure illnesses. Operations were performed, too, using crude tools. Back then, medicine went hand in hand with superstition. Ancient healers mixed practical cures with magic charms and chants. And while the sick and injured sometimes got better, quite often they did not. In the fifth century b.c., the Greek doctor Hippocrates . . ."

GERMS
"Even when you close your bedroom door or take a shower, there's an audience. Trillions of microscopic animals, called microbes, are all over you. They're in your mouth, on your skin and even in important organs. Believe it or not, that's good news. Without the millions of kinds of microbes in the world, you couldn't live. For instance, some microbes help digest food and produce vitamins.. . . "

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

• Wow! The Most Interesting Book You'll Ever Read About The Five Senses. By Trudee Romanek, Kids Can Press, 2004.
• Perk Up Your Ears: Discover Your Sense of Hearing. By Vicki Cobb, Millbrook Press, 2001.
• Follow Your Nose: Discover (The Five Senses). By Vicki Cobb, Milbrook Press, 2000.
• Open Your Eyes. By Vicki Cobb, 2003.
• Feeling Your Way. By Vicki Cobb, Milbrook Press, 2003.
• Your Tongue Can Tell. By Vicki Cobb, Milbrook Press, 2003.
• A Natural History of the Senses. By Diane Ackerman, Vintage, 1991.

ADULT BOOKS

• You Hear With Your Ears (Scholastic Readers). By Melvin and Gilda Berger, Scholastic, 2003.
• You Smell With Your Nose (Scholastic Readers). By Melvin and Gilda Berger, Scholastic, 2003.