June Almeida, Virus Detective!: The Woman Who Discovered the First Human Coronavirus is a non-fiction picture book by Suzanne Slade and illustrated by Elisa Paganelli. It was released on March 15, 2021 by Sleeping Bear Press. The publisher lists the book as being at a second grade reading level and of interest to grades one through four. There’s a special thanks of note before the store begins to Dr. Joyce Almeida, who is June Almeida’s daughter, it says she supported “this project by vetting the text and sketches, answering questions, providing primary sources, science papers, and photos, as well as intimate insights about her mother.” The story opens with this spread of June Almeida running to school as a child in Glasgow, Scotland in a hurry to get to class. The June the book describes in her youth has varied interests, yes, a passion for science, but also interested in books and photography. Biographies for youth used to only focus on the person’s accomplishments and area of fame, and I think it is important for youth to see that there are other aspects to the individuals. The book continues to cover Almeida’s younger years with stopping school at sixteen to help her family pay bills, beginning work at a hospital, moving to London, and meeting Henry. It then goes into detail about the new microscope Almeida got to use in Canada and how it used electrons to take up close pictures of cells and viruses. Almeida put antibodies and virus particles together to create even more detailed pictures to help scientists and doctors. Later she again tried new techniques to identify a new virus, the coronavirus. In the back there’s a section with More About June with some photographs of her with a section on June and the Electron Microscope. That is followed by a June Almeida Timeline and a Selected Bibliography. From doing a cursory amount of research on June Almeida, it sounds like her name and the significance of her work was largely overlooked in modern times until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several articles about her and her work began circulating in spring of 2020, such as this one from the BBC or this from The New York Times. For more kid friendly articles, there is this one from Kids Post of The Washington Post or this one from Time for Kids.
This video has the author and illustrator, Slade and Paganelli, with a moderator from a Brave Girls Storytime put on by the National Women’s History Museum. They read the book and then answer questions about it. Suzanne Slade did a guest blog on author Patricia Newman’s site with ideas for LitLinks and resources or discussion questions to tie into the book. I think a lot of kids would find comfort in knowing that there have been new viruses before and that scientists figure out how to take pictures of them and detect them. The book could be tied into some youth level news articles on current events with the pandemic. It could also be tied into how past work in science fields build modern work in science fields and doing research on different discoveries. It could also be tied into researching other overlooked scientists they maybe haven’t heard of. There are several resources now on women scientists, such as pages from Britannica, Science Focus, or Smithsonian Magazine. It would be really impactful to tie this into an activity with microscopes if some were available for young students to have an opportunity to see things differently.
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