A Microbiology Picture Book

by Janie
 

Fig. 1. Book cover. Source. Fron­tis­piece.

Here's a fun way to get little ones in­ter­es­ted in micro­bio­logy. In Won­der­ful World of the Small: A First Book of Micro­bio­logy, Lindsey Millar and Vivien Sárkány intro­duce the dive­rsity of microbes on Earth. They pre­sent an anthro­po­morph­ized cast of dif­fer­ent types of microbes – bac­teria, algae, dia­toms, yeasts, archaea, nema­todes, viruses, amoebas, fungi, para­mecia, and lastly, slime molds – and high­light their unique traits.
 

Each double-paged spread is full of play­ful illus­tra­tions, info tid­bits, jokes, and speech bub­bles that offer a light­hearted intro­duc­tion to micro­bial innov­ations, includ­ing the bac­ter­ial flagel­lum, the viral cap­sid, the hat-thrower fungus' launch­ing of spores, a para­mecium's con­trac­tile vac­uole, and more.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Fig. 2. The paramecium pages from the book. Source: Won­der­ful World of the Small.

It's a heart­warming and edu­ca­tional pic­ture book to get kids cur­ious about the micro­scopic lives that in­habit our world.