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A VACCINE IS LIKE A MEMORY

Name: A VACCINE IS LIKE A MEMORY
Author: Rajani LaRocca
ISBN: 9781499813265

by Rajani LaRocca ; illustrated by Kathleen Marcotte ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 20, 2023

Authoritative and reassuring.

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An introduction to the history and benefits of vaccines.

“A vaccine,” the author, a physician, writes, “is like a memory of a disease you never had.” In simple but not simplistic terms, LaRocca explains how vaccines work with the immune system to minimize the effects of certain diseases and traces the history of their development up to the creation of vaccines for Covid-19—crediting not only English physician Edward Jenner for popularizing the idea of smallpox inoculation in the late 18th century, but also Onesimus, an enslaved man who told Cotton Mather about a similar procedure in 1721. LaRocca ramps up the level of detail in the backmatter with descriptions of different sorts of germs, six types of vaccines, including those using mRNA and adenovirus, and a list of common infections (with symptoms) that can be prevented with vaccines. The message that vaccines are safe as well as effective comes through clearly in both the narrative and Marcotte’s cartoon illustrations of inoculated children surrounded by figurative dotted-line shields. The racially diverse cast of adults and children includes a hijab wearer, several people wearing face masks, and two using wheelchairs. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Authoritative and reassuring. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: June 20, 2023

ISBN: 9781499813265

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Little Bee Books

Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.

In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: July 11, 2023

ISBN: 9781728271170

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore

Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

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by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

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THE WONDERFUL WISDOM OF ANTS

by Philip Bunting ; illustrated by Philip Bunting ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024

Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched.

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An amiable introduction to our thrifty, sociable, teeming insect cousins.

Bunting notes that all the ants on Earth weigh roughly the same as all the people and observes that ants (like, supposedly, us) love recycling, helping others, and taking “micronaps.” They, too, live in groups, and their “superpower” is an ability to work together to accomplish amazing things. Bunting goes on to describe different sorts of ants within the colony (“Drone. Male. Does no housework. Takes to the sky. Reproduces. Drops dead”), how they communicate using pheromones, and how they get from egg to adult. He concludes that we could learn a lot from them that would help us leave our planet in better shape than it was when we arrived. If he takes a pass on mentioning a few less positive shared traits (such as our tendency to wage war on one another), still, his comparisons do invite young readers to observe the natural world more closely and to reflect on our connections to it. In the simple illustrations, generic black ants look up at viewers with little googly eyes while scurrying about the pages gathering food, keeping nests clean, and carrying outsized burdens.

Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched. (Informational picture book. 6-8)