91 books like What Is the Coronavirus Disease Covid-19?

This picture book biography does so many things at once—and does it all with a masterful, lyrical storytelling voice. Of course, the primary thing this book does is tell the story of a real person’s life: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In this story, we learn about his ordinary childhood, his personal interests, and the ways his family inspired and encouraged him. It shows that even people we see on the news were once children, just like the kids reading this book. More than that, this book is a celebration of science and the excitement of scientific discoveries.

It reminds kids (and grown-ups) that science is a creative endeavour. So once the urgency of learning about the COVID virus wanes, this book will be still valuable as a primer on how scientists do their work. Additionally, though the narrative part of… show more.

I love simple graphical picture books. I love books with a sense of humor. I love books that are interactive, talk directly to the audience, and get kids to physically act out things as they’re being read to. This story has so many elements that I love…I wish I wrote it! The story explains that microbes are everywhere and invites the reader to touch the book and pick up a tiny microbe that is lounging in the paper. Then it invites the reader to touch one of their teeth. This transfers the microbe into their mouth. The book goes on to prompt the reader to discover the microbes in their clothes and their belly buttons! Yuck, right? Well, that kind of yuck is an effective way of demonstrating the point that after you touch stuff, it’s a good idea to wash your hands.

This book encourages little ones to read along with a recurring refrain, “Don’t let your dragon spread germs!” The premise of this book is that children have to teach their pet dragons hygiene. In using this logic, the story puts the young characters in the book in the position of the teacher-caregivers. The illustrator, Andy Elkerton, did a great job with the dragons. Each dragon has its own personality and the illustrations are full of energy and motion. Those colorful, dynamic dragons are fun for kids to look at while a grown-up reads the text. 

The whimsical illustrations in this book caught my attention and captured my heart. The colors in this book are lovely pastels and the text is simple so there’s lots of room to admire the images. I am partial to picture books that are simple and emotional. As we continue on for so many months making the extra effort to wear masks in our daily lives, there’s something heartening in seeing pictures of other people happily wearing masks on the pages of this book. The text is written in sets of rhyming pairs, which are sometimes a stretch. I appreciate that this book for young readers shows a diverse group of people all merrily going about their tasks while wearing protective face masks. 

Parasitism of other species is probably the most common way of life on earth. It is not uncommon for a species to have tens to hundreds of parasites that exploit it. Viruses have fine-tuned the parasitic lifestyle to the extreme, attacking just about all other forms of life and fueling the evolution of counter-defenses in their hosts. Viruses co-opt the genetic machinery of their hosts for just about everything they need to replicate themselves. Carl Zimmer’s book is not only the best introduction I know to the remarkable diversity of viruses, it also is written with the crystal clear, elegant prose and solid scientific grounding that are the hallmarks of all his writing. 

Jennifer Haupt has collected a diverse, fascinating, and powerful group of writers who dig deep into the challenges we faced at the height of COVID.

The anthology, a fundraiser for the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, features poems, essays, interviews, and more. I found the wide range of experiences and emotions both comforting and inspiring.

One of the best academic books written at convergence of the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics is The Virus Touch.

Here, Bishnupriya Ghosh showcases how “epidemic media” inform how epidemics are understood and experienced—making this text so relevant right now. She looks at how media—images, numbers, and digital models—whether generated by scientists, artists, or activists enable us to see and understand viruses and bear witness to their effects in new ways.

What is unique about Ghosh’s scholarship is how looks to the environment to study health which illustrates the complex and tangled relationships between epidemics, humans, animals, and media. Ghosh’s rich examples, ranging from modelling viruses to reading test results to tracking infection rates and mortality numbers, ensure that Virus Touch speaks to diverse readers.

With the prevalence of remote work since the coronavirus pandemic, team members and leaders alike are struggling to adapt. What I love about this book is that it causes the reader to reflect on the specific aspects of their work life that are frustrating, disappointing, or detrimental to their career. It, of course, offers practical advice for overcoming the most common issues, but there is so much power in the awareness the book generates. For anyone working remotely some of the time, all of the time, or hoping to in the future, this book will be something you’ll refer to over and over again.

I think this book is for advanced middle-grade or even on the lower end of middle grade. I found it to be chocked full of facts, history, and information about deadly diseases. I think fans of “scary” kids’ (aka Bendy, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Haunted Canada) books will appreciate the real-life terrors of real-life diseases. 

As a historian, some books just keep coming back to you. McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples is just such a book. 

He is really the first historian to outline the dramatic impact that infectious diseases have had on human history. He outlines the spread of smallpox, diphtheria, Yellow Fever, Malaria, the Plague, and many others, as they originate mostly in Africa and come into the Mediterranean Ocean, to produce cycles of death. 

But the people who lived on the edge of that ocean soon came to develop antibodies, and ultimately, master the impact of such terrible diseases.  

Unfortunately, those diseases were soon transferred to the Americas, where perhaps a hundred million American Indians died from them. They had no immunities!

Had such a calamity not occurred, the two western hemispheric continents might easily be dominated by Natives, who spoke a different language and prayed to a different God.