Review of The Code Breaker, by Walter Isaacson with Sarah Durand

The Code Breaker

Jennifer Doudna and the Race to Understand Our Genetic Code

by Walter Isaacson
with Sarah Durand

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2022. Adapted from The Code Breaker, by Walter Isaacson, 2021. 320 pages.
Review written January 8, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review

This is the young readers’ adaptation of the book for adults by Walter Isaacson. Honestly, I had trouble with the density of this book, so I’m glad I read the young adult version! This was much slower reading than a typical young adult novel, and was packed with details and facts.

But despite the density, this is fascinating reading. The introduction begins with a story of a woman cured of sickle-cell anemia with gene therapy. Then they talk about some other possibilities of these techniques that came from breaking the human genetic code — learning how DNA and RNA work.

The book is the story of the career of Jennifer Doudna, who ended up being a pioneer in the field of gene-editing research and technology. But her story goes much deeper than simply one woman’s accomplishments. This is a section from the introduction:

Doudna’s life offers an up-close look at how science works. Her story helps answer: What actually happens in a lab? To what extent do discoveries depend on individual genius, and how has teamwork become more critical? And has the competition for individual prizes, money, and fame stopped people from working together for the common good?

Most of all, Doudna’s story conveys the importance of basic science, meaning quests that are curiosity-driven rather than geared toward immediate, practical results. Curiosity-driven research plants the seeds — sometimes in unpredictable ways — for later discoveries. For example, a few scientists decided to research basic physics simply because it excited them, and their discoveries eventually led to the invention of the microchip. Similarly, the findings of a handful of researchers who took an interest in an astonishing method that bacteria use to fight off viruses helped generate a revolutionary gene-editing tool that humans now use in their own struggle against viruses.

Jennifer Doudna is the perfect example of that brand of curiosity. Hers is a tale filled with the biggest of questions, from the origins of the universe to the future of the human race. Yet it begins with a sixth-grade girl who loved searching for “sleeping grass” and other fascinating phenomena amid the lava rocks of Hawaii, and who came home from school one day to find on her bed a detective tale about the people who discovered what they believed to be “the secret of life.”

The story in this book is very immediate, with the entire last section talking about using CRISPR technology to detect and fight coronaviruses.

I think it’s especially apt to adapt this book for young adults, since this technology will be something they’re growing up with. The entire last half of the book raises questions about ethics and the morality of editing the genes of humans and possibly our descendants. As more and more becomes possible, it is good to bring to young people’s attention the need to think about ethical concerns.

The science in this book is fascinating, and might end up being something very much a part of young people’s lives. I can’t say that it gave me a new understanding of gene editing, because saying I understand it would be exaggerating. But it at least gave me a new appreciation.

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Review of American Murderer, by Gail Jarrow

American Murderer

The Parasite That Haunted the South

by Gail Jarrow

Calkins Creek, 2022. 159 pages.
Review written January 15, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist
2022 Cybils Award Finalist, High School Nonfiction

I’m squeamish, so I didn’t expect to enjoy this book from the “Medical Fiascoes Series” as much as I did. But Gail Jarrow, a past winner of the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award, makes the story of this medical mystery fascinating.

It’s all about a parasite. Scientists in Europe discovered that hookworms were making people sick in the late 1800s. But in 1902, a scientist named Charles Wardell Stiles discovered a distinct type of hookworm in America. He named it Necator americanus, which means “American murderer.”

But after discovering the new parasite came the dawning realization that more than 40% of rural southern families were infected with it, up to 2 or 3 million people.

Afflicted people complained of diarrhea and a bloated abdomen. Their skin was paler than normal. Children were physically underdeveloped. Adults didn’t have enough endurance to perform even minor work, and they were usually poor because they couldn’t earn a living. Some people had experienced these symptoms for years, and family members had died with the same ailments. None of them knew why they’d been plagued for generations. They just accepted it.

The rest of the community considered these people sluggish and lazy. Because pica was a common symptom, the infected were often mocked as “dirt-eaters.” No one understood that the symptoms were not a sign of weak character or low mental ability. They were evidence of a tiny worm — actually hundreds of worms — slowly sucking blood from a victim’s small intestine.

Living during the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s easy to understand why most of this book is about convincing people — and doctors — that hookworm was real and convincing them to get treatment. Scientists also worked to get them to change things about their everyday lives. The worm gets into people through skin — mostly when people walk with bare feet on infected ground soiled with infected human feces.

So besides getting people to get tested and treated, there was also a campaign for sanitary privies. But those were expensive, as were shoes for growing children.

But the whole story of fighting the bug is an amazing success story with millions of lives saved and improved. I especially liked the many photos of infected people before and after treatment. The last chapter covers ways parasites still endanger people today, yes, even in America.

Overall, this is an abundance of clear information about a major public health problem from a hundred years ago that I previously knew absolutely nothing about. Almost every spread has photos or side bars, and the story is riveting as Gail Jarrow tells it. An amazing achievement.

gailjarrow.com

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Review of Queer Ducks (And Other Animals), by Eliot Schrefer

Queer Ducks
(And Other Animals)

The Natural World of Animal Sexuality

by Eliot Schrefer
illustrations by Jules Zuckerberg

Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins), 2022. 230 pages.
Review written February 22, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 Michael L. Printz Honor Book
2023 Capitol Choices selection

Oh my goodness, I learned so much from this book! You’ve probably heard of the book And Tango Makes Three — a book about two male penguins starting a family and hatching an egg together? Well, that’s merely a drop in the bucket of same-sex relationships in the animal kingdom. In fact, “The number of species with confirmed substantial queer behaviors, published in well-regarded scientific journals, is 1,500 and growing.”

The thing is? In the past, we didn’t have an easy way to tell male and female penguins apart. Or the males and females of many species. So when scientists saw animals having sex or doing sexy things, they assumed they were looking at males and females. Well, now we have blood tests we can use to determine sex, and there’s a whole lot more going on out there.

The entire book is fascinating and eye-opening, even for me, a straight cisgender woman. But because I have a transgender daughter and left a church that doesn’t affirm LGBTQ people, I especially enjoyed the chapter on velvet-horned deer.

I already knew that many varieties of fish and frogs often change their gender. But I didn’t know anything about velvet-horned deer.

As they grow from yearlings into adults, all male deer go through a “velvet” stage, in which their growing horns are covered by soft fuzz. As they reach sexual maturity, the velvet is generally shed, revealinng the bone antlers underneath. Some deer born with external male genitalia, though, never shed their velvet, and have bodies closer to those of female deer.

Known as velvet-horns, these intersex deer don’t enter the pecking order of the rest of the deer society. In fact, they’re soon driven out by the males. They skip the bachelor herds and the groups of mothers, and instead form their own troops of three to seven velvet-horns. Velvet-horns don’t produce offspring, but live out healthy deer lives in their own velvet-horn societies.

Life as a velvet-horn sounds kind of awesome, actually. You hang out with your “found family” of like-minded deer, skip the work of birthing your own fawns, and avoid the deer-on-deer violence of the bachelor herds.

That’s just part of the chapter about animals apparently outside the gender binary. But I wish I could show it to the pastor whose entire argument that being transgender is “against God’s design” was because of a verse in Genesis that says God created them “male and female.” Because God also created the animals “male and female” and it turns out that they aren’t constricted by that. (Of course, God also made “day and night” — and we still know about twilight. It was never even close to a good argument, but knowing what I know now, it got even worse.)

And I knew, from old “Wild Kingdom” TV shows, that many birds do elaborate courtship dances. What I didn’t know is that some birds will do them to a member of the same sex and pair bond with them for life. In albatrosses, it’s often the females who do this. They’ll have some sex on the side to get eggs, and then they work together to raise the chicks — and those two-mother “nest-holds” end up having better chick survival rates.

I can’t even begin to tell all the stories of what I learned in this book. They’re told in an engaging way and just completely surprised me. It turns out that animals of all kinds have lots of sex and a lot of it is not males and females making babies. Who knew?

The author of the book is gay, and grew up being told that was unnatural and twisted.

This is partly a book for lonely eleven-year-old Eliot, who only began to see himself as worthy of full respect many years after coming out. I thought that queerness separated me from the rest of the animal world, but came to love myself once I began to feel deep in my bones that being “unnatural” didn’t automatically make me bad or wrong. That’s still certainly true: there’s no innate link between unnatural things and wrongness. After all, reading books could be considered “unnatural,” but few people argue that it’s bad. Regardless, the young Eliot would have had a quicker journey to self-acceptance if he’d known the science that’s in this book.

I admit I giggled a little when I first checked out this book. Once I started reading, I was flat-out fascinated! It’s not often I read a book so packed with scientific facts I didn’t know before.

Here’s a paragraph from the concluding chapter:

While the “why” of animal queerness is still a topic of productive and exciting scientific debate, the “that” of it — the fact that animal queerness exists and is substantially represented in the natural world — is unmistakable. There’s an incredible diversity to animal sexual behavior and sexual expression, and each new piece of research in this exciting field has led to revelations that reshape what we assume animals are capable of — and what humans themselves are capable of. Queer behavior in animals is as diverse and complex — and natural — as any other sort of sexual behavior.

It turns out that queer humans are not unusual after all, if you look at the wider animal kingdom. And that’s a refreshing and eye-opening perspective.

Oh, and let me also mention that it’s all told in a humorous and friendly tone, with cartoons at the front of each chapter portraying an animal GSA group. The book doesn’t stir up lustful feelings, but it does stir up lots of scientific curiosity and wonder.

Learn some science! Read this award-winning book!

eliotschrefer.com

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Review of The Chemistry of Food, by Carla Mooney

The Chemistry of Food

by Carla Mooney
illustrated by Tracy Van Wagoner

Nomad Press, 2021. 118 pages.
Review written November 19, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

I think this nonfiction book for middle school and up is just so cool. I took a Chemistry class in high school, but this book tells me all kinds of things I didn’t know about the chemistry of food. Sure, I know the basics, but it’s interesting to hear the actual science behind many different processes. It’s illustrated with photographs and diagrams on almost every page.

Here’s what the chapters cover: The intro chapter, besides talking about food, gives some basics of chemical bonds, mixtures, solutions, and compounds. And how heat affects those things. The next chapter covers chemicals in our food, looking at water, lipids, carbohydrates, proteins, enzymes, vitamins and minerals. Next there’s a chapter on the chemical reactions of cooking: endothermic and exothermic reactions, heat conduction, caramelization, and other kinds of chemical reactions. Then comes a chapter on nutrition and how we get nutrients and energy from food. After that we get the science of flavor, and it all wraps up with a chapter on texture.

One of the big strengths of this book are the many fascinating experiments it shows you how to do. I confess I didn’t try them, but I wanted to. If there were a kid in my home, I don’t think I could resist. Some of those experiments include: putting oil and water together and watching what happens when you add dish soap, learning about protein denaturation by making lemon curd, caramelizing sugar and checking the mixture at different temperatures, figuring out how much gluten is in different flours, examining cookies baked at different temperatures and times, making ice cream in a bag with different amounts of salt and ice, and comparing different starches as thickening agents, and comparing methods for making crispy fries. They don’t tell you what’s going to happen with these experiments, which makes them all the more intriguing. They do have follow-up questions to help you think through what did happen, as well as further things to try.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this book would kickstart a kid’s interest in science. But whether or not it does, it provides a fascinating look at the science behind everyday things.

nomadpress.net

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Review of Washed Ashore, by Kelly Crull

Washed Ashore

Making Art from Ocean Plastic

by Kelly Crull

Millbrook Press, 2022. 40 pages.
Review written October 8, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

This book is the kind I can’t resist showing to my coworkers on the spot. The art is stunning. The subject is convicting. And the overall presentation is mind-blowing.

Yes, I knew that there’s lots of plastic trash in the ocean. But this book makes you feel the magnitude.

This book documents the work of Angela Haseltine Pozzi and her organization called Washed Ashore. They make animal sculptures out of trash found in the ocean.

Washed Ashore shows large photographs of fourteen of these sculptures. They give facts about the ocean animals portrayed and how they’re affected by plastic trash. They also list tips for reducing plastic trash in the ocean. And across the bottom of each spread, there are objects for you to find in the sculptures.

It’s finding those objects that makes you look closely and get your mind blown with all the junk. It also helps you realize just how big these sculptures are. Some of the objects to look for include a cigarette lighter, sunglasses, an inhaler, a steering wheel, toothbrushes, multiple toys, shoe parts, and even the front of a stereo.

And the art itself is stunning. Looking closely and realizing what it’s made of makes the achievement all the more remarkable.

Take a look at this book. I don’t believe that you can fail to be moved.

kellycrull.com
washedashore.org
lernerbooks.com

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Review of A Seed Grows, by Antoinette Portis

A Seed Grows

by Antoinette Portis

Neal Porter Books (Holiday House), 2022. 36 pages.
Review written August 30, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

As I write this review, I’m still deciding whether to put it on my Picture Books page or my Children’s Nonfiction page as an example of beginning nonfiction for the very very youngest listeners. I think I will put it on the Picture Books page, because this is the kind of book I’d love to use in a story time or to read to a small child on my lap, and I don’t usually look on the Nonfiction page for such books.

In fact, for years, I’ve kept my eyes open for picture books with very few words on a page to use for Toddler story times and their shorter attention spans. Even though I’m not doing story times any more (with my new awesome job as Youth Materials Selector), I have to point out that this book would be perfect for that — and it teaches little ones about the life cycle of plants in a way they can understand, so it would also work for a STEM story time.

There are few words on a page and they’re short and sweet, and the bright, colorful illustrations use simple shapes. Here’s how the book starts out:

A seed falls

[That’s on a white background. The facing page shows one striped sunflower seed falling against a blue background.]

and settles into the soil

[Now we see the same blue background with a stripe of brown at the bottom and the seed sitting on top of that.]

and the sun shines

[Now the facing picture is a big round sun.]

and the rain comes down

[Now the picture side has raindrops filling the page.]

and the seed sprouts

I think by now you get the idea. Very simple language and simple, colorful pictures show the entire process of a sunflower growing. When it grows to its full height, the page folds upward to show how tall it gets.

After the sunflower blooms, it makes seeds which birds take to their nests. Eventually, to end the book, a seed falls. And we’re back to where we started.

Three pages at the back give more information for readers a little bit older, including a diagram of the life cycle of a sunflower plant.

This book is simple, but the bright blue and yellow colors leave me smiling.

antoinetteportis.com
HolidayHouse.com

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Review of Kitten Lady’s Big Book of Little Kittens, by Hannah Shaw

Kitten Lady’s Big Book of Little Kittens

by Hannah Shaw

Aladdin (Simon & Schuster), 2019. 56 pages.
Review written July 11, 2020, from a library book

A big thank-you for my co-worker Pam Coughlan for alerting me to this book. Reading it makes me sad we didn’t get to booktalk in the schools this year – because the many, many adorable photographs of little kittens that fill this book would make it an absolutely certain hit.

The book is written by the “Kitten Lady,” who fosters hundreds of kittens every year, getting them to a point where they can be adopted into a forever family.

Fostering is when you give temporary care to a homeless animal. Once the kittens are healthy and old enough, they go to a permanent home with a loving adopter, and then my house is empty so I can save even more kittens.

It’s like a revolving door of tiny tigers!

She goes on to talk about the care the kittens need and steps in their growth. It’s all loaded with photographs. I think my favorites are the ones of kittens learning to eat solid food. I had no idea that kittens could be just as messy as babies – more so, because instead of putting their hands in the food like babies, kittens put their feet in the food.

Of course, that was also the page that kept me from rushing out to foster a kitten myself. Be warned that if you expose your kids to this book, you should probably be prepared for them to want to start a new family activity of fostering kittens.

But if you just want an overload of cuteness, this book will do the trick.

KittenLady.org
simonandschuster.com/kids

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Source: This review is based on a book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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Review of All in a Drop, by Lori Alexander

All in a Drop

How Antony van Leeuwenhoek Discovered an Invisible World

by Lori Alexander
illustrated by Vivien Mildenberger

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019. 93 pages.
Review written April 2, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review
2020 Robert F. Sibert Award Honor

This book is about the man who discovered that there were tiny organisms in drops of water. And what surprised me is that even the members of the Royal Society in London didn’t believe him for a whole year after his report.

Born in 1632 in the Netherlands, Antony van Leeuwenhoek never studied science, and he became a draper, a seller of cloth. But to examine cloth closely, they used magnifying lenses. After a trip to London, where he saw a book about a new invention called a microscope, Antony decided to make one himself.

What fascinated me is that Antony didn’t make just one microscope and then look at many different things. Instead, he’d glue his specimens to a base, and then make a new microscope to look at that thing. He devised a system, and he’d shape the glass and screw the lenses into focus. They ended up being the best microscopes in the world at the time.

And Antony proceeded to make discoveries. He discovered that insects didn’t spontaneously generate, as was thought at the time. And he found “little animals” in rivers and streams and also in people’s mouths. In fact, he made discoveries in many different fields of science without ever being trained as a scientist, but simply a curious person.

I love it when I read a children’s book and learn about someone I knew nothing about. This short chapter book is full of fascinating information and tells about a man who changed the way we see the world.

lorialexanderbooks.com
vivien.mildenberger.com

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Review of Bringing Back the Wolves, by Jude Isabella, illustrated by Kim Smith

Bringing Back the Wolves

How a Predator Restored an Ecosystem

by Jude Isabella
illustrated by Kim Smith

Kids Can Press, 2020. 40 pages.
Review written August 22, 2020, from a library book

Bringing Back the Wolves is not flashy, but it’s simply presented nonfiction in a picture book format – and I learned a whole lot.

This book explains that all the wolves in Yellowstone National Park were gone by 1926. The government had offered a bounty on wolves and other predators in its quest to tame the west. But what nobody at the time realized was that would affect the entire ecosystem.

The book talks about the food web and food chains. But it shows that wolves affected the ecosystem far beyond ways you’d expect. Especially effective for me were spreads at the beginning and end of the book showing a valley in Yellowstone’s northern range in 1995 just before wolves were reintroduced, contrasted with a picture of that same valley twenty-five years later.

In between those spreads, it’s clearly laid out how much the wolves affected. First, it was the large herds of elk, which in 1995 were five times larger than in 1968. Fewer elk affected which plants and trees could survive and thrive. That affected animals in the middle of the food chain as well as bringing more birds and raptors to Yellowstone. Then, especially affecting the landscape, beavers came back, building dams and reviving the ecosystem on their part. Songbirds returning mean that the park even sounds different than it did in 1995. I’d no idea how much is affected, down to the insects in the soil.

Here’s how the author finishes this book, on the spread with the picture of the revitalized valley:

Twenty-five years after their reintroduction, about 500 wolves roam the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, staking their claim in the food web. Wolves have helped to balance the ecosystem just by being themselves, apex predators. But perhaps even more important, studying the wolves has exposed just how complex and interconnected the ecosystem is, revealing surprising links no one could have imagined.

kidscanpress.com

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Review of Even More Lesser Spotted Animals, by Martin Brown

Even More Lesser Spotted Animals

More Brilliant Beasts You Never Knew You Needed to Know About

by Martin Brown

Scholastic, 2019. First published in the United Kingdom in 2019. 52 pages.

Even More Lesser Spotted Animals is, not surprisingly, a sequel to Lesser Spotted Animals, which I reviewed in 2017 and booktalked in the elementary schools.

I’ve got a soft spot for Martin Brown’s illustrations. He’s the illustrator of the Horrible Histories books that my son devoured when he was in elementary school. As in Horrible Histories, he puts comical speech bubbles in the illustrations and makes them tremendously entertaining. He also knows how to pull out the most interesting information to kids.

Like its predecessor, this book focuses on species and subspecies that nobody ever talks about. Many of them have entertaining quirks. The forest musk deer, for example, is a deer that sits in trees. And the dingiso is a kangaroo that lives in trees. Then there are sengis, which are as small as a guinea pig with a nose and appetite like an anteater.

In this book, I learned about the existence of both kangaroo rats and rat kangaroos. You might think bears are too common to appear in this book, but did you know that the Syrian Brown Bear doesn’t live in Syria? It is also vulnerable to extinction. The maned wolf is not actually a wolf, but a dog that looks like a fox with long legs.

Those are some of the interesting animals this book explores, with a spread for each animal and a box of basic facts about each one. The fun parts are the cartoons that occur throughout the book. Give this book to a child who enjoys animal facts, and they’ll absorb all kinds of information. An entertaining way to learn. And as the author says in the Introduction, “But how can we help something survive if we don’t even know it exists?”

scholastic.com

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