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Germ Zappers by Fran Balkwill and Mic Rolph, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Press, $8.95, ISBN 0879695986

PARENTS wearied by the bizarre exploits of Metal Greymon, Goku or Bubbles
(don’t ask) might try presenting their embattled child with Germ
Zappers. This nifty little book is in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press’s
Enjoy Your Cells series. It showcases home-grown heroes—the cells of the
immune system.

It’s presented with brilliant simplicity: the drawings are accurate, the text
is a doddle to understand. Nor can you lose with plot lines like
these—murder by squashing, macrophages as super rubbish collectors,
neutrophils engaged on spy-like “deadly missions”. It is full of inspired
touches such as “Top of the Pox”, a parade of all the usual viral suspects that
has warts rubbing shoulders with diarrhoea.

Joshua, six-and-a-half, read it with relish. “A germ,” he told me afterwards,
“is a small thing that has quite a lot of power, really, and could make you
very, very sick. Germs are bacteria or viruses. Cells in our body can kill them.
There’s a special sort of cell in your belly that makes acid and destroys
anything suspicious like a germ. I also thought the natural killer cell was
powerful and cool. It’s funny-looking—ball-shaped with bumps—and it
sneaks up and sticks holes in the membrane of an infected cell.”

See? Germ Zappers is every bit as weird as Dragon Ball Z—and
there’s no merchandise attached to it. Go for it.