diatoMedia, LLC (2020)
Reviewed by Lydia (age 6) for Reader Views Kids (10/2020)
“Esie Explores Dangerous Germs” by S. Kitanovic is the second book about Esie the bacterium and her adventures in the world. In the first book, Esie gets swallowed by a cow and finds her family and friends inside that cow. She tries to tell Es how exciting it was when she was in the cow, but he does not seem interested. Now in this book, Esie is still trying to get Es to be excited about being swallowed by a cow.
When they are talking about it, they walk back home and see that viruses are attacking their neighbors! Esie tells Es how bad viruses are to bacteria and why they should stay away from them. They head back to the cows so that Esie can try again to get Es to go with her. Es says he will, but Esie goes first. While in the cow, she sees her family and friends and a not so nice family member float by. Esie has to decide if she wants to stay a beneficial bacteria for the cow, or if she wants to act like her cousin and be mean. Esie needs to find Es. He has been missing for a while, and with the viruses outside of the cow, Esie is afraid for him.
I like this book because, like with the first book, I learned a lot. I didn’t know much about viruses before, but now I know a little bit, and how they look. I guess this is what the Corona Virus looks like, which is kind of scary. I liked the pictures in the book that showed the bacteria and viruses; they were all colorful and easy to tell what they were about. While reading the book, there were some words in the story that I didn’t know about. Because of that, I don’t think that this book would be good for a first grader to read by themselves, but maybe a third-grader or older. I’m wondering if there will be another book about Esie later on, and if so, what adventure she’ll have that time?!
A Note from Mom: As the second book in the series, it did not disappoint. I like how the story starts up where the last book finishes or least not a lot of time has passed. As the parent reading the book, I appreciated the extra bits of information included at the bottom of each page about bacteria. I didn’t know any of it, and the facts seem relevant. I agree with the bottom of the title page that this is “a story of friendship, discovery, and danger, with snippets of science,” because it felt like a regular story, but I know that kids will learn from it. I believe that kids of any age would enjoy it, but older kids will get more out of it in terms of the storyline and the facts provided.
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