Brod Bagert
Systematic MeEntertaining, Instructional, and ComprehensiveGlands and hormones, hormones and glands,constantly sending their bio-commands,adjusting my state on an hourly basis,keeping my body in homeostasis.from “My Noble Glands” The natural inquisitiveness of young minds will take flight as they meet, live and in person, the celebrities of the human body-the cells, organs, and systems that together maintain homeostasis.Grounded in the long-standing principle that children remember “90% of what they do in dramatic presentation,” this poignant yet comical collection of dramatic poems, monologues, and plays makes the study of the human body a thing of joy. A cookie hilariously describes every step of its teeth-to-toilet journey through a human digestive system. A spunky child virus ignores its mother’s horrific warnings with disastrous consequences as it runs face-to-face into the denizens of a human child’s immune system. Peter and Paul Kidney, the famous PP Twins, reveal the truisms they learned in Excretory College as they describe their role in eliminating liquid waste from the body of rambunctious Alexander Pic. And Miss Medulla Oblongata, part of the brainstem of young Quanesha Jones, is interviewed by talk show host C.T. Scan to reveal how she and her sister brain regions prevent Quanesha from falling “flat on her face on that dance floor.” From skin to skeleton to the electro-chemical function of neuron cells, Systematic Me transforms complexity into simplicity, the theoretical into the concrete, the detachment of abstract concepts into the immediacy of imagined personal experience—accurate, emotional, and entertaining. 3
