Vaccines: A Graphic History

by Paige V. Polinsky, Dante Ginevra

Genres: Graphic Novels, Non-fiction
Pages: 36
Rating:

Synopsis:

Vaccines have been used to safely introduce people's bodies to diseases for centuries, and they save millions of lives each year. By giving people a weakened or dead version of a disease, a vaccine allows the body to develop antibodies which recognize and fight the disease later on. Early vaccinations used dry scabs from smallpox to promote smallpox immunity. Doctors and scientists across nations took and improved the method, developing vaccines for health crises from whooping cough to polio to COVID-19. This graphic history features famous cases and current challenges, including the time frame for creating a new vaccine.

Paige V. Polinsky’s Vaccines: A Graphic History is a very whistle-stop tour of the history of vaccination, covering types of vaccination, how vaccination works, early vaccination, and COVID vaccines, all in an incredibly tight space.

It doesn’t seem to really know what it wants to be, since there are quite technical terms (like “live attenuated vaccine”), illustrated by a couple of examples, but then it’s so general and swift that it lacks actual interest, to my mind.

It seems like a valiant educational effort, and the art’s not terrible or anything, but… I think it’s simultaneously too dry and too brief to do much good.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)