IMMUNE HEROES

A child’s injured knee becomes a battleground for the immune system and invading bacteria in Gandhi’s picture book.

Siblings Mayu and Nimi, who have brown skin and dark hair, are racing their bikes when Mayu hits a pebble. Mayu falls and scrapes his knee, and Nimi comforts him: “Remember what Mom always says? The pain is just the start of the healing process.” Nimi’s words herald a deep look into Mayu’s skin, where Captain T, the “Helper T cell,” is readying the immune system for action. First, the neutrophils arrive to see how bad the damage is. Sticky red blood platelets come next, ready to close the wound. But one staph microbe makes it past the defenses and starts reproducing, so Captain T calls in the macrophages to eat the bacteria. Soon, they have plasma factories working overtime to make antibodies. The result? Mayu quickly feels better and gets back on his bike. The author, an immunologist, effectively boils down the mechanics of the immune system to make them easily accessible to a young audience and gives readers a human character to empathize with, an approach that invites readers to use their imaginations to consider their own bodies. Bramwell’s digital cartoon illustrations evoke the shapes of the immune heroes’ real-world counterparts, which have humanlike features and descriptions to make them more relatable to beginning readers.

A solid cartoon introduction to a complex concept.