Health and Safety

Difficulty: Challenging

MONITORING COMPREHENSION

In 1796, an unknown country doctor named Edward Jenner developed and administered the world’s first vaccine-turning the tide in humanity’s age-old war against disease in this epic story of smallpox.

Age Range: 10 and up

Recommended by Joan Kindig

Health and Safety

Difficulty: Challenging

MONITOR COMPREHENSION

Science writer John Fleischman uses a clipped, engaging expository style to tell the incredible story of the railroad worker who, in 1848, survived the piercing blast of a 13-pound iron rod as it entered below his cheekbone and exited the front of his skull in Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science. What happened and what didn’t happen inside the brain of Phineas Gage will tell you a lot about how your brain works and how you act human. Photographs, glossary, a resource listing and index lend this textbook case the same sense of immediacy as do the words.

Age Range: 9 – 11

Recommended by Joan Kindig

Health and Safety

Difficulty: Challenging

ASK QUESTIONS

“It was the worst epidemic in this country’s history, and the search for its cause is still one of science’s most urgent quests.

It was 1918, the last year of World War 1. Thousands of men lived in the crowded army training camps that were scattered all across the United States. That spring, a strange flu struck the soldiers at a camp in the Midwest. Healthy young men went to the hospital complaining of sore throats and fevers. Within hours they had suffocated, their skin taking on a terrible purplish hue.

The devastating flu spread like wildfire across the country, infecting soldiers and civilians alike. It killed more than half a million people in a matter of months, then disappeared as suddenly as it had come.”

Age Range: 7 – 12

Recommended by Joan Kindig, Ed.D.

Health and Safety

Difficulty: Challenging

MONITORING COMPREHENSION

In a powerful, dramatic narrative, critically acclaimed author Jim Murphy describes the illness known as yellow fever and the toll it took on the Washington, D.C.’s residents, relating the epidemic to the major social and political events of the day and to 18th-century medical beliefs and practices.

– Finalist for the 2003 National Book Award, Young People’s Literature – A 2004 Newbery Honor Book – Winner of the 2004 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award

Recommended by Joan Kindig