Innovation in Medicine

School Library Journal

1 January 2009

Brief in scope, these titles make medical topics accessible. Surgery begins with a child needing stitches, then turns to a history of the field, with references to new techniques. In Disease, a doctor giving an injection to a youngster explains how it is easier to fight disease today than in the past. The bulk of the text discusses discoveries over the ages in diagnosis and treatment. Transplants opens with two brothers watching Frankenstein; the focus of the work is on the history and future of transplants, and cell biology. It updates Sandra Giddens and Owen Giddens’s more comprehensive Future Techniques in Surgery (Rosen, 2003). The medical terminology in these volumes is explained clearly and supplemented by sidebars. Well-captioned color and black-and-white photographs and reproductions break up the sometimes dry text. A few of the illustrations, such as that of a kidney being removed in Transplants, may be too graphic for squeamish students. The books supply enough material for short reports or for children interested in the topics. They fill a need for current children’s medical materials and are worthy purchases.

— Lynn K. Vanca, Akron-Summit County Public Library, Richfield, OH