Disgusting Food Invaders

Disgusting Food Invaders and Gross Body Invaders were named to the Bank Street’s Best Children’s Books of the Year list for 2012.

The food we eat is also eaten by assorted insects and bacteria as the illustrations show in this addition to the Up Close and Gross: Microscopic Creatures series. Small circles on each page show the magnification for each creature Thrips can be seen if you look closely, but it helps to see them at 120 times actual size. Moths go into cereal and pasta boxes, and the food of choice for cheese mites is obvious. It’s easy to spot mold on bread, but fascinating to see how tiny the spores are even at 110 times their size. Rat hair and ant pieces can get packaged when food such as peanut butter is made or stored and maggots are welcome in the making of Sardinian Casu Marzu cheese. Bacteria rank among the most dangerous invaders of food; the common ones, Salmonella and E. coli, are shown super-magnified 7,000 times. The author explains how the illustrations were made and gives a Glossary. While the book will likely draw particular interest from boys because of its gross topic, the information is solid and great for reports.

With such appetite-suppressing chapter titles as “A Peanut Butter and Rat Hair Sandwich” and “Maggot Cheese, Anyone?,” this entry in the Up Close and Gross series gleefully plays up the unsavory side of its subject in a graphic view of the tiny creatures that often share our food. On each colorful spread, short, accessibly worded text-boxes mix with fascinating, microscopic views of “food invaders,” from helpful cheese mites, whose digestive juices can have a flavor-enhancing effect, to harmful E. coli, pictured in a deceptively lovely rainbow image of the bacteria clinging to the walls of a human digestive tract. Throughout, the simply phrased sentences make the concepts clear, but it’s the visuals that will attract the most attention and may lead children to the appended resources to search for more information about the hidden organisms humans ingest. Notes about how the photos were created and a glossary conclude this slender installment in a sure-to-be-popular science series.

With such appetite-suppressing chapter titles as “A Peanut Butter and Rat Hair Sandwich” and “Maggot Cheese, Anyone?,” this entry in the Up Close and Gross series gleefully plays up the unsavory side of its subject in a graphic view of the tiny creatures that often share our food. On each colorful spread, short, accessibly worded text-boxes mix with fascinating, microscopic views of “food invaders,” from helpful cheese mites, whose digestive juices can have a flavor-enhancing effect, to harmful E. coli, pictured in a deceptively lovely rainbow image of the bacteria clinging to the walls of a human digestive tract. Throughout, the simply phrased sentences make the concepts clear, but it’s the visuals that will attract the most attention and may lead children to the appended resources to search for more information about the hidden organisms humans ingest. Notes about how the photos were created and a glossary conclude this slender installment in a sure-to-be-popular science series.