The Skeleton Inside you

The Skeleton Inside you

On Halloween I wore a skeleton costume. l used to think skeletons were made up just to scare people. Now I know that skeletons are real. They are not scary. I would not be me without a skeleton. You would not be you.

Skeletons are made up of many bones. Bones give you shape. A ball of clay has no bones inside it. You can make a ball of soft clay into any shape you want. You can make it into a little figure. Then you can squash the figure and roll it into a mustache or a snake. But nothing can change your shape, because you have a skeleton inside you.

A marionette has a skeleton too, but it is made of wood and wire, not of real bones. A plain wooden chair is like a skeleton without any covering. When the chair is covered with stuffing and cloth, it is like your skeleton covered with muscles and skin. But your skeleton is different. It is made up of bones.

Your skeleton is made up of 206 bones. There are 64 bones just in your two hands and arms. Some of your bones are big, others are small. Some bones are flat, others are round.

Bones are hard. They give your body shape. Your ears and nose have something called cartilage in them to give them shape. Cartilage is softer than bone, and so it can bend. When the barber folds over your ear to cut your hair, your ear does not break off. That's because of the soft cartilage in your ear. Once I pushed my nose flat against a bakery window to look at some cookies. My nose didn't hurt, and it didn't break off. It came back to the same shape. Push your nose flat. It will bend too, because it has cartilage inside it.