Kids - What to Read

Do you love a good book? Our Children’s Librarians do! And we’re excited to share some great recommendations with you. This page gets updated regularly with reviews of the latest books we’ve been reading.

Life on us! Tim Flannery and Emma Flannery

I am fascinated by how my marvellous body works. I also love gross facts. This book gives us plenty of amazing facts in an easy-to-understand format with cute colourful illustrations. I loved learning about microbes, bacterial, viruses and parasites.

The book is divided into 3 main sections: Friendly fellows, Gross germs and Pesky Parasites.

Friendly Fellows are microbes that support our health. Those microbes in the gut have a powerful impact on our brain. This is an amazing connection. I never dreamed that my gut could be so powerful in helping me manage stress and moods. Now for the gross- and there's plenty of that!  People who don't have a lot of healthy gut bacterial can receive a poo transplant to improve their gut environment. Scientist have proposed creating a poo bank to store poo samples from people around the world. Imagine that!

Gross germs explores the world of unfriendly germs and viruses. Things that make us pour out vomit or poo or snot as our bodies fight to rid itself of these awful invaders. There is some interesting history too about how we have developed ways to prevent illness- like vaccinations.

Finally we take a look at Pesky Parasites. The most deadly animal in the world are mosquitos which cause one million deaths every year.  When a mosquito drinks your blood they spit into our blood stream and sometimes this spit contains parasites that can harm or even kill us. Leeches, fleas and ticks can also spit into us with unpleasant consequences. Grossest of all though is the thought of worms invading your body.

If you like to learn new interesting things and be shocked and horrified then this is the book for you.

Find it on the catalogue - ebook and eaudiobook also available.