Author Eugene Knox distills her three decades of yoga teaching experience into an accessible how-to manual for children, complete with clear photographs and fun illustrations.
Yoga Is Fun is thoughtfully organized, with a table of contents for the postures and a logical progression of poses leading up to a description of sun salutation sequencing, meditative postures and an index of postural benefits. Knox does an excellent job of explaining basic yoga poses in a concise manner that would be easily understood by young readers. She is able to simplify the yoga practice, which is quite broad in scope, into a guide that kids can utilize in order to cultivate physical health and emotional stability. (One note: The author’s inclusion of shoulder stand within the list of postures is surprising. Although a child may be able to approximate the alignment of this pose, both children and adults alike must be extremely careful of the cervical vertebrae in this shape in order to avoid injury.)
The book has a few notable flaws. The author states that Sanskrit words are used for the yoga poses “Because Yoga began in India and the language at that time was Sanskrit.” In fact, Sanskrit is a literary language that is still in use as the primary sacred language of Hinduism, but was never a common speaking language.
Formatting, grammatical and punctuation errors are also sprinkled throughout the text, particularly missing periods and a lack of consistency in paragraph breaks. And while the photographs and illustrations within the book are suitable (if sometimes blurry), the cover photo would benefit from a sharper reproduction.
Despite such issues, this book handily achieves its mission of presenting yoga in an enjoyable and age-appropriate way for children. Parents or teachers wanting to introduce the yoga practice to kids will find it a useful teaching tool.
Also available in hardcover.
