Dental anatomy coloring book

This is the latest in the series of books designed to teach anatomy through the colouring-in of line drawings, and focuses on the specialised anatomy required by dental professionals. There is much in this book that will be found valuable by all students though it is not always sufficiently detailed in its approach, especially for dental students. Teachers of anatomy may also find this book helpful when designing line illustrations for their own teaching.

The value of such a book should be no surprise for there is a long tradition of teaching of anatomy by means of line illustrations, drawn on the blackboard, used in teaching materials or in textbooks, which are designed to simplify anatomy for students starting their studies. This book presents a series of line diagrams that the students colour for themselves. The diagrams have numbered leader lines with the labels given in a table below each diagram so that students can mask these out for purposes of self-testing. Students report that they find this can be an effective supplementary method for learning anatomy.

The book is intended to provide complete coverage of the anatomy of the head and neck and is organised systematically. There is no descriptive text beyond the code for the labels and so this book would need to be supplemented by an appropriate textbook. Many chapters are successful, some less so. Within the muscular and arterial systems and tissue spaces chapters many of the diagrams work well in giving clear illustrations of the structures in question. The nervous system chapter provides concise, synoptic summaries of the anatomy of the trigeminal and facial nerves. In the dentition chapter the diagrams of tooth morphology were extremely valuable though the dental histology was lacking in detail. However, in the skeletal system chapter while some diagrams were very clear others were over-simplified, such as the skull, or confusing, such as the pterygopalatine fossa. Least successful were the first two chapters giving overviews of the body and orofacial anatomy. These diagrams were often highly simplified and certainly not at a level suitable for most dental students though students unfamiliar with biology might find them a helpful starting point. Though the decision to adopt a systematic approach means the diagrams are relatively uncluttered including at least some regional diagrams would have given greater scope to demonstrate the interrelationships of structures in clinically-important regions (eg the floor of mouth, parotid region, infratemporal fossa or neck).

In summary, a book that can be recommended as an additional means of learning anatomy for many dental professionals though it may be felt that its lack of detail in some areas limits its value.