Germ Zappers

"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."
– New Scientist