Deborah Hopkinson

“The bulk of the vol­ume focus­es on the bubon­ic plague from the 14th cen­tu­ry to the 1910s, alter­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal and sci­ence chap­ters, and fre­quent­ly debunk­ing estab­lished the­o­ries. The author’s chum­my use of the first per­son “we” lets read­ers learn along­side her as she reveals infor­ma­tion gleaned from experts, trans­form­ing her writ­ing into the style of one of the Mid­dle Ages plague chron­i­clers she fre­quent­ly quotes. Addi­tion­al chap­ters on the 1918 influen­za and COVID-19 pan­demics add con­text to under­stand­ing how far med­i­cine has come in han­dling con­ta­gious dis­eases. Infor­ma­tive cap­tioned pho­tographs alter­nate with evoca­tive pen-and-ink illus­tra­tions. Bold vocab­u­lary words are explained con­tex­tu­al­ly as well as defined in the cor­re­spond­ing glos­sary. Sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als include two fun quizzes and a call to be “a Twen­ty-First Cen­tu­ry Chron­i­cler” of COVID-19, as well as fur­ther read­ing and a select­ed bib­li­og­ra­phy. Source notes, which the author describes as anal­o­gous to “evi­dence that a detec­tive col­lects to make a case,” and a com­pre­hen­sive index also sup­port researchers. VERDICT Good for bud­ding mid­dle school epi­demi­ol­o­gists and his­to­ry buffs who can’t resist a book about dis­eases.” (School Library Jour­nal)