EYE SUPPLEMENT Professional Book Review: Smelling to learn

Acursory glance at this short but well-crafted book might well induce the reader to think that the primary object – a study of smell in childhood – is both bizarre and limited.

Nothing could be further from the truth since Professor Kucirkova presents a professional and scholarly account, which serves to withstand criticism of the work's inquiry.

A delightful excursion into the world of sensory engagement, the book is not short of euphemism but is to be praised for its literary and scholastic explanation of the significance of olfaction in early childhood.

Kucirkova's choice of study here clearly poses academic constraints in terms of an absence of previous publications in her chosen field of research. But it is almost as if there is a quiet revolution taking place, the findings of which have been released even after the launch of Olfaction in Early Childhood. The results of the research, for example, carried out by the School of Biological Sciences at the Oxford Research Centre, that reveal some of the worst eflects of people born without a sense of smell, were reported on earlier this year. A decisive lesson is that olfaction is no longer a remote subject but one gathering a substantial momentum of its own.