What's Eating You? Parasites – the Inside Story

From ticks to tapeworms, nits and fleas, there is a huge armada of parasites out there just waiting for a passing animal to provide it with a meal. These extraordinarily adaptable creatures can make their home in skin and hair, fur and feathers, blood and guts, liver and lungs. In fact every living animal is a walking habitat, with over 430 different kinds that can live on or in a human body, though not all at once, one hopes. Nicola Davies combines a scientist’s eye for detail with a tuned ear for just the sort of information to appeal to a young audience. (Did you know for example that the mole has the biggest fleas at 8mm long?) After a wonderfully simple opening, she moves on to seriously scientific stuff, with quite complex explanation of immune systems and cell structure, but Neal Layton’s bold line and wash artwork adds humour and detail to make it accessible. Graphic description of the lifecycle of the tapeworm may put you off your lunch, but younger readers will relish the gory details. The endpapers alone are enough to make you start scratching. An inspiring natural history book from the same team that produced the excellent Poo.