Heroes of Medicine and their Discoveries. (Crabtree Connections). Angela Royston. St. Catharines, ON: Crabtree, 2011. 32 pp., pbk. & hc., $9.95 (pbk.), $20.76 (RLB.). ISBN 978-0-7787-9918-4 (pbk.), ISBN 978-0-7787-9997-2 (RLB). Subject Headings: Medical innovations-Juvenile literature. Inventors-Juvenile literature. Grades 3-6 / Ages 8-11. Review by Suzanne Pierson. **** /4

excerpt:

Winning the Argument

In 1854, Pasteur was asked to find out why some beer and wine turns sour and has to be thrown away. But when he announced in 1857 that tiny living things, called microbes or germs, do the damage, no one believed him. Yesterday, however, Pasteur invited a group of famous scientists to the University of Paris. He proved to them beyond a doubt that germs do exist, and they can be killed by heat.

Heroes of Medicine and their Discoveries is another in the Crabtree "Connections" series. Currently, there appear to be 36 books in this series grouped in related topic groups of three. Heroes of Medicine and their Discoveries is grouped with two other books about inventors, Inventors Who Changed the World and Inventors' Secret Scrapbook.

      The book covers are colour coded to indicate whether the focus of the book is Information, Instruction, Report, Persuasive, Explanation, Recount, Biography, Journalistic, and Formal. As with other books in the series, there is no explanation, and so the colour coding isn't likely to be of any particular use to young readers, but it may be a helpful system for those purchasing the books.

      Heroes of Medicine and their Discoveries has a pale green spine and back cover, indicating that it has been written in a Journalistic style. The book presents information on 12 medical breakthroughs as though the breakthrough was being reported at the time it happened. For example, "The Heart is Just a Pump," reports that:

Dr. William Harvey, the doctor to King Charles I, has just published an astonishing idea. He says that the heart pumps blood around the body.

      The report is dated 1628, and both the breakthrough and the controversy that ensued are highlighted. Each double-page spread also includes a section titled "What Happened Next?" This section brings young researchers up to date in this area of medicine.

Doctors argued with Harvey for many years, but by the time he died in 1657, his theory had been accepted.

      The final discovery is dated Today. Titled "New Hearts in the Future," this section looks at the invention of an artificial heart developed by Professor Alain Carpentier over the last 20 years. The update box in this section is revised and reads What Will Happen Next?

      Heroes of Medicine and their Discoveries follows a traditional organization with a table of contents at the beginning and an index at the end. Each book also includes a glossary and a further information page, containing both books and websites.

      Like other books in the Crabtree "Connections" series, Heroes of Medicine is very colourful with an attractive layout including photos, text boxes, and illustrations with many labels. Information is chunked and highlighted in creative ways to draw attention in a very reader-friendly way. Young researchers and readers trying to decipher nonfiction text will find the content easy to access once they understand the journalistic format.

Highly Recommended.

Suzanne Pierson is a retired teacher-librarian, currently instructing Librarianship courses at Queen's University in Kingston, ON.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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