(4) K-3 Illustrated by Kathleen Marcotte. “A vaccine is like a memory of a disease you never had, so you and others won’t get sick!” LaRocca describes the ways in which germs, including COVID-19, cause infections, the varieties of illnesses humans have had historically and today, and the role of vaccines in preventing some infections from ever occurring. The language is, for the most part, child-friendly, and the explanations connect well to experiences and terms that will be familiar from the COVID era (e.g., herd immunity, epidemic, inoculation). The illustrations of doctors, scientists, and families working together to keep their communities healthy are also reassuring. Some of the choices in presenting concepts, however, such as in a sequence describing how vaccines work in the body, and in the section explaining COVID’s impact on society, simplify concepts, such as the immune system and the conditions needed to reopen schools, that are more complicated than as presented. Helpful endnotes aimed at adults provide additional information about the types of vaccines in use today and the microbes that they target.

Reviewer: Danielle J. Ford