Vaccines: A Graphic History

by Paige V. Polinsky, Dante Ginevra (Illustrator)

Overview

Vaccines have been used to safely introduce people's bodies to diseases for centuries, and they save millions of lives each year. By giving people a weakened or dead version of a disease, a vaccine allows the body to develop antibodies which recognize and fight the disease later on.

Early vaccinations used dry scabs from smallpox to promote smallpox immunity. Doctors and scientists across nations took and improved the method, developing vaccines for health crises from whooping cough to polio to COVID-19. This graphic history features famous cases and current challenges, including the time frame for creating a new vaccine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728448725
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/01/2022
Series:	Medical Breakthroughs
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	6.75(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.12(d)
Lexile:	GN710L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 10 Years

About the Author

Paige Polinsky is a writer, copy editor, and professional freelancer based in Minnesota. She writes across many industries, from children's nonfiction to veterinary medicine. She is interested in the judicial system and loves to apply her skills to the legal field.

Dante Ginevra is a comic artist, illustrator, art director, and freelancer. He is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Antibody Building 4

Chapter 2 The Speckled Monster 8

Chapter 3 Decades of Discovery 16

Chapter 4 The Battle for Vaccines 24

Source Notes 29

Glossary 30

Further Information 31

Index 32

Editorial Reviews

2021-10-13
Historical background for readers hazy on the whys and wherefores of vaccines.

Polinsky traces the development of vaccines from 16th-century reports of inoculation against the “speckled monster” of smallpox in what is described as merely “Asia” to the release in 2020 of vaccines for Covid-19. The narrative is dense, injected with names, dates, and scientific terms. Unfortunately, it’s already somewhat dated and turns notably skimpy when it comes to describing how the Covid-19 vaccines were developed. More disturbingly, although the author comes down hard on the author of a since-discredited 1998 claim that certain vaccines cause autism, she notes without justification or comment that Lady Montagu and even Jonas Salk tried out vaccines on their own children and that researchers mass-cultured the polio virus in “tissue from human embryos.” Figures, White or light-skinned, stand in static poses uttering wooden declamations (“Daniel Oliver, my boy, you have just received the first vaccine in American history!”). Ginevra cuts a few corners, pairing the writer’s blithe assurances about how safe the treatments are to multiple views of children being stuck, scratched, or bandaged. In one disquieting scene, we see polio victims in iron lungs as bodiless heads. Readers concerned about viral diseases and their treatment (who isn’t these days?) will come away somewhat better informed—but hardly soothed. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Clotted with facts, it barely scratches the surface when it comes to immunological details or ethical issues. (glossary, multimedia resource list, index) (Informational picture book. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews