Be Healthy! It's a Girl Thing: Food, Fitness, and Feeling Great by Mavis Jukes and Lilian Wai-Yin Cheung, illustrated by Debra Ziss Ages 10+ 128 pages Knopf March 2009 Paperback     Be Healthy! It's a Girl Thing: Food, Fitness, and Feeling Great contains important information for girls ages ten and up. The first chapters explain the benefits of eating healthy foods and the importance of following nutritional guidelines. Grocery shopping strategies and food preparation tips follow. Chapters thirteen and fourteen focus on physical fitness, including discussions of exercises that improve flexibility and aerobic activity. The section on feeling good covers ways to live positively and where to go for help when you need it. Written by two women knowledgeable in the field of health education, the presentation in Be Healthy! It's a Girl Thing is casual yet encouraging (subheadings include “You Know You Can!” and “Let’s Go!”; chapters end with phrases like You can make a difference!, Yay!, Dream and You In?) with attention-grabbing sidebars entitled F.Y.I and Heads Up. The vegan section includes a recipe for vinaigrette dressing in the vegan section; the fitness chapter features a pictorial demonstration of eight stretches; and a vitamin and mineral chart is listed at the back of the book. The authors incorporate many examples of how food, fitness and feeling great work together to keep us healthy, but readers will be able to understand this best by looking at the “Cactus Plan” shown on page 29 which outlines how to nourish your body and mind with food and activity guidelines and ways for staying connected with family and friends. Girls looking for nutritional information will likely find what they need in this book but may have to look elsewhere if they want more information about exercise routines. Although this book does contain a lot of information, it would be more appealing if the illustrations were as colorful as the cover (new to this edition) and if the chapters included more photographs and recipes.     web reviews   Tanya Boudreau/2011 for curled up with a good kid's book   For grown-up fiction, nonfiction and speculative fiction book reviews, visit our sister site Curled Up With a Good Book (www.curledup.com)