Disgusting Food Invaders

With such appetite-suppressing chapter titles as “A Peanut Butter and Rat Hair Sandwich” and “Maggot Cheese, Anyone?,” this entry in the Up Close and Gross series gleefully plays up the unsavory side of its subject in a graphic view of the tiny creatures that often share our food. On each colorful spread, short, accessibly worded text-boxes mix with fascinating, microscopic views of “food invaders,” from helpful cheese mites, whose digestive juices can have a flavor-enhancing effect, to harmful E. coli, pictured in a deceptively lovely rainbow image of the bacteria clinging to the walls of a human digestive tract. Throughout, the simply phrased sentences make the concepts clear, but it’s the visuals that will attract the most attention and may lead children to the appended resources to search for more information about the hidden organisms humans ingest. Notes about how the photos were created and a glossary conclude this slender installment in a sure-to-be-popular science series.