Dreaming in the Night ¦ Learning a Lesson ¦ Munching a Meal ¦ Running a Race

A silly book I once read about exercise made the remarkable claim that 'you can skate nearly a mile on one slice of bread'. The vision of Sonja Henie doing a thousand yards with only a vertical slice of Mother's Pride between her and the ice has remained with me.

'The Body in Action' series makes a far better job of explaining, among other things, the food/energy/exercise relationship and is distinguished throughout its four volumes by the plainness of its statements and the breadth with which each of its subjects is considered.

So Munching a Meal pulls together dietary constituents, common crops, senses, salivary glands and dental hygiene before launching into the digestion story. Learning a Lesson is subtitled 'how you see, think and remember' - and touches on senses, illusions, experience, reflexes, voluntary actions and mnemonics. Dreaming deals with getting ready for bed, the nature and virtues of sleep as well as three pages of absolute common-sense about dreaming (Sigmund who? ... never heard of him). Running is more straightforward, dealing with skeleton and muscles, respiration, circulation (Charlotte Corday fans will rejoice to see that a heart pumps enough blood to fill a bath tub in about 13 minutes) and food/energy.

The four volumes make a synergic information web whose effect is much enhanced by excellent layout and illustrations and gains much credibility from the editors' decision to use just one person as the photographer's model for each title.

This avoids much of the shabby tokenism displayed by some other works of this ilk. So - Andeep, Anna, Laureen and Thomas - thanks for adding to our knowledge in so pleasant a way and not least for allowing us to deduce that a jet airliner can fly 300 metres on 40 bars of chocolate. The rest of you have to guess which one that comes from.