My group decided to do our children’s book on the digestive system. When we first started, we had varying ideas of what to focus on. One group member had brought up the idea of the immune system portrayed by an army of soldiers. Another member had brought up the idea of going through each body system. However, most group members agreed that the digestive system presented through a series of amusement park rides was the best route. Hence, we started our research on the parts and functions of the digestive system.

We figured the digestive system was a good topic to make a children’s book because children often wonder about what happens to the food they eat. We can utilize this opportunity to inform children about the wonders of the digestive system by incorporating a fun theme into it. Since we are creating a children’s book, our group figured that it’s best to make it more engaging and entertaining by using an amusement park theme to introduce each part of the digestive system. We took inspiration from a Magic School Bus episode that goes through the function of the digestive system. Our main audience is elementary school children. Because we decided to target a younger audience, we had to make sure the language of the book is understandable to the majority of elementary schoolers. We did this by avoiding the use of difficult and scientific terminologies. We also utilized some “question and answer” formats throughout the book by thinking up questions that children could be curious about. For example, on page 13, Austin asks the teacher to elaborate on the pancreas, and Ms. Jacobs goes on to explain the function of this specific organ to the class. Our group also decided to write the book in the third person and use dialogue to make it more engaging and seem as if the children and teacher are really communicating with one another throughout the story. We did this with the intention of making the story slightly more imaginative and entertaining for the audience.

The group also uses several images for the children’s book. We have images of each ride that represents the nine different organs of the digestive system. This helps to create a visual for those that are more visual learners. It also makes it more enjoyable to add some colors and animation, given that this is a children’s book. For example, for our first ride, we have The Muncher which is supposed to represent the mouth. We paired this ride up with an image of a funhouse-themed attraction. Speaking of The Muncher, our group has come up with some interesting names for the rides. Instead of using the basic terminologies for the organs (mouth, esophagus, liver, pancreas, etc.), we came up with names that correspond to the functions of each organ. For example, The Churner of Doom for the stomach, The Blender for the liver, and so on. Another choice we made that makes our book more appealing to our young audience is the layout and colors. We chose to have pictures after each page of text, so it does not seem too overwhelming for the audience reading our book. We also chose to use lighter colors such as lime, salmon pink, and pastel yellow to make the pages more colorful and eye-catching.

Regarding group members’ participation, everyone participated in the project equally. We had four people focusing on the plot, one person focusing on images, and one person organizing and putting everything together in a coherent manner. Chardell, Nafisa, Yesmi, and I were chosen to do the plot. Each of us took two to three slides. Chardell chose to work on the introduction, the mouth, and the esophagus. Nafisa chose to focus on the gallbladder and the large intestine. I chose to work on the stomach, the liver, and the pancreas. Yesmi worked on the small intestine and the anus. Naomi focused on the ride designs and animation. Lastly, Musaffa worked on choosing the layout and organizing the slides and images.

Overall, I feel that this project was a fun and entertaining way to present an informative piece on the topic of our choice. I like that my group and I got to use our creativity to put the book together. One pro that I experienced was the balanced contribution, everyone had a role and assisted in making this children’s book. Another pro is creativity. We were able to play around with image design, writing style, and colors with this project. The workload was also a pro because it wasn’t too daunting. We did not have to write pages of work, instead, each of us focused on a specific part and explained it in a few sentences by utilizing dialogue and imagery. Some cons were punctuation and coherency. Since the slides were split among four different group members and each of us had our own writing style, we had to edit and fix each slide to make the whole book more cohesive and understandable. There were also a few punctuation errors that had to be fixed throughout. Some room for personal improvement could be time management. We had some trouble finding a time for everyone to meet up and work on the project, hence, everyone was working on the book on their own time, and the only times we got to meet as a group was during class time. For personal improvement, I feel that I could use more visual imagery in my slides because my slides might be a little more difficult to visualize for our target audience as I tend to have less descriptive language in my writing.