June Almeida, Virus Detective! by Suzanne Slade

June  lived in Glasgow, Scotland with her parents and her younger brother, Harry who was just a baby. June loved school because she loved learning. Science was her favourite subject and she loved to share what she learns with her parents and Harry. When June was ten years old, Harry became very sick and died. It was a difficult time for June and her family.

As she grew older, June's passion for science grew. June loved to read science fiction and her easy manner helped her gain many friends. She loved to photograph nature, having a keen eye for details. Unfortunately June's dream of attending university to study science was just a dream. Her family could not afford to send her to school and so she left her studies at age sixteen to help her family financially. 

Instead she got a job in a hospital lab where she used a microscope to examine samples from hospital patients. When her family moved to London, England, June found another job in a hospital lab. In London, she met her husband, Henry. After they married, June and Henry decided to emigrate to Toronto, Canada where she was hired to work in a new research lab. In this lab, June began working with an electron microscope that magnified samples 25,000 X . An electron microscope uses a beam of

electrons to view samples. It is able to create very detailed pictures based on how the electrons behave when they hit the sample. June hoped to obtain clearer images of what she was researching.

To do this she decided to use the electron microscope to take images of viruses surrounded by antibodies. 

In 1960, June gave birth to a baby girl and then eventually returned to her research as well as authoring papers. This led to a job offer from a scientist at a hospital in London, England, so they returned to the city. 

A researcher named David Tyrell asked June if she could investigate what seemed to be a new virus that had given a boy a very bad cold. Using a technique called negative staining to prepare the virus sample, June then put it into the electron microscope. The virus was different from any she'd seen before with tiny dots around it. This virus was similar looking to two other viruses she'd seen from animal samples. June's paper on these viruses years ago had been dismissed, but her work confirmed the existence of a new virus. June and the other doctors decided to call the virus a corona virus because of the crown of dots surrounding it.

Henry wanted to return to Canada but June did not want to give up her work in London. They divorced and June continued working on many different viruses. Her work allowed doctors to develop medicines to help people sick from certain viruses. After retiring from her research, June continued to learn, teaching herself to play the flute and to use a digital camera. 

Discussion

June Almeida, Virus Detective is a timely picture book given the Covid-19 pandemic. June Almeida is virtually unknown, yet she was an accomplished woman researcher and scientist who discovered a new family of viruses, the corona virus. However, SARS, MERS and Covid have all made people across the globe more aware of corona viruses and the severe illness they can cause. It was June Almeida who laid the groundwork for research into these unusual viruses.

June Hart was born in 1930 to Jane and Harry Hart in Glasgow, Scotland. June's younger brother died of diphtheria when he was six years old. June was ten and his death drew June into an interest in science and medicine. June was a good student, passionate enough about science that she won the science prize at Whitehall School. Because she couldn't afford to continue on, June left school at sixteen to work. She trained as a laboratory technician at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. During her time there, she was also able to complete further technical certification. 

June moved to London in 1952 when she was twenty-two years old.She met her first husband, Enrique Rosalio (Henry) Almeida. Their shared love of classical music drew them together and they married in 1954. They emigrated to Canada in 1956 and four years later, June gave birth to her daughter, Joyce. In 1964, the couple returned to London where she found work as an electron microscopist with Professor Waterson at St. Thomas Hospital. Unfortunately, Henry wanted to return to Canada but June's work was beginning to gain recognition and she refused to leave. They divorced in 1967.

June began to realize that she needed a university degree to further her research so she obtained her M.Phil. in 1970 and in 1971 her D.Sc. from the University of London. As Suzanne Slade mentions in this picture book biography, June began using what is called immune electron microscopy to study viruses. 

As time went on and June's reputation grew, David Tyrell , head of the Health Common Cold Research Unit asked June to look at a virus, B814 that he and his team had isolated from school boys who had colds. When June viewed them using the electron microscope she recognized that they were similar to other viruses she had previously seen in mice and chickens. These viruses had "spikey projections" on their surface that gave them the appearance of having a crown or "corona". June considered these a new family of viruses and Almeida, Tyrell and Waterson labelled them as corona viruses. These viruses were mostly ignored for years because they were not believed to cause serious illness. We now know differently.

Slade provides many of the important details of June Almeida's life, a story of determination and resiliency.  Lacking the financial means to obtain the education she would need to work in the field of science, June set out to work in a hospital and gain the experience she needed. Her hard work, attention to detail and abilities soon resulted in better work, opportunities to participate in research and publish papers. Eventually she was able to attend university and get the education she needed to advance in her profession.

Although June made many major contributions to medical science - the use of morphology to classify viruses and discovery of a new family of viruses, the corona virus - were probably her most significant. Readers might wonder what benefit pictures of viruses offered to scientists and medical practitioners. Visualizing a virus helps work out its morphological characteristics and has allows scientists to devise methods of treating persons who are infected. For example,  June's work on the rubella virus, which can cause congenital birth defects, helped doctors understand how the virus interacted with the immune system. Slade writes that "Her pictures helped scientists develop medicines that could attach to viruses and block them from making people sick." 

June Almeida is yet another brilliant woman scientist, in a long list of brilliant women scientists whose stories are being recovered and told to a new generation of girls. Picture books like June Almeida, Virus Detective, serve to inspire young girls,  that careers in science are possible, and that they have significant contributions to make! 

In researching and writing this picture book, Suzanne Slade was able to talk with June's daughter, Dr. Joyce Almeida who answered questions and provided much primary source material. Slade has included a detailed note titled "More About June", a timeline of June Almeida's life, and a Selected Bibliography. The illustrations were created digitally by Elisa Paganelli. 

You can read more about June Almeida's life and her work from the What Is Biotechnology website.

Book Details:

June Almeida, Virus Detective by Suzanne Slade
Ann Arbor, Michigan: Sleeping Bear Press 2021

Kalahari by Jessica Khoury

Sarah Carmichael is the daughter of zoologists living and working in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. Sarah has lived all her life in the field, working alongside her parents. Now it's just Sarah and her father after her mother died four months earlier from a bee attack. Helping them is Theo, a Bushman who has trained Sarah to track and to live in the Kalahari.

Sarah and Theo wait by the landing strip for a plane bringing in five teens who have signed on to a educational safari. The teens include seventeen-year-old Joey Xiong, a Hmong American from California, Canadian Avani Sharma, Miranda Kirk and Kase Rider of Boston, and seventeen-year-old Sam Quartermain from Pittsburg. In return for hosting the teens on a conservation exchange program, Sarah's father will receive much needed research funding from the Song Foundation. When the group arrives at camp they are met by Sarah's father who tells the group that they will be staying in tents.

The group has no chance to settle in when Sarah's father and Theo race out of camp in the truck to try to locate poachers who are hunting a white lion. When Sarah's father does not return by dark, she tries to contact him via radio but is unsuccessful. Sam asks Sarah if they should be worried and she tells him that the situation with the poachers has been getting progressively worse. As night comes on Sarah becomes increasingly concerned about her dad and Theo and even more so when they receive a garbled radio transmission that gives their location and that they are being pursued.  The transmission ends with the sounds of gunshots, leading Sarah to believe her father is now in grave danger.  Sarah is unable to reach Henrico, the South African warden located south of their camp, and she cannot contact the military nor anyone else to help them because the satellite radio is in the Cruiser with her father and Theo. 

At first Sarah wants to leave immediately to track her father but Sam insists he accompany her and this results in all five teens deciding not to stay in camp. Packing water and muesli bars, the group sets off the next morning, with Sarah tracking her father and Theo. Eventually they discover tracks that indicate the Cruiser was being followed by another vehicle. By evening Sarah makes another discovery that the trucks are being followed by an adult male lion. As the sun is beginning to set, Sarah and the group discover the damaged Cruiser smashed into a tree. Tracks leading away from the Cruiser lead Sarah and Sam to Theo who is fatally wounded. As Avani, whose parents are both doctors, attempts to help Theo, he warns them of a silver spirit, a lion hunting. Sarah is deeply shaken by Theo's death and mystified by her father's disappearance. She doesn't know if he has been captured or is somewhere out in the bush.

Sarah discovers that the lion has been around the Cruiser but instead of going after the lion, Theo appears to have followed her father. The group also discovers that the food supplies which were in the Cruiser have been ravaged by wild animals. After burying Theo, the group eats some leftover fruit and then try to rest. The next morning they manage to get the Cruiser started and head back to their camp. However, they discover that the men pursuing Sarah's father have visited the camp and burned it to the ground, destroying not only the tents and supplies, but also Sarah's parent's notes and research. They learn that a man named Abramo is in charge and is determined to find them.

Sam tells Sarah that this is all very strange as ordinary poachers would never go to these lengths, to murder researchers. Sarah creates a false trail for the men to track while she leads her group west hoping to meet up with the road that will take them to Ghansi and safety.  The next morning while working to free the truck which has become bogged down in sand, the group first hears and then is attacked by a lion. However this lion is not ordinary - it is "silver, from nose to tail, as metallic and gleaming as mercury." Sarah immediately realizes that this is the lion the men have been searching for and that they have stumbled upon something much bigger than poaching.

The lion attacks the group as they huddle in fear in the truck and they are only saved by Sarah firing her shotgun and wounding it in the shoulder. The group flees in terror into the bush. Sarah and Sam return to the area and discover the lion is no longer wounded, but behaving strangely and watch as it kills an ostrich for no reason. The lion once again picks up their scent and begins pursuing them through the desert. They only manage to escape when the entire group falls into a huge underground cavern filled with water.

Sarah and the group find their way out of the pool by crawling to the top of metal scaffolding that leads them to an above ground pumping station and find themselves in what appears to be some kind of research facility. As Sarah, Sam and the others scout out the camp, which appears to be abandoned, they discover a laboratory and then a room filled with animals in cages. The cages are filled with numerous different mammals from the Kalahari desert. Many of the cages contain animals that have been shot dead. Other cages hold live animals, some of whom are partially silver while others are like the lion, completely silver. They also find a lab worker dead in the room.

Sarah now believes that the animals have some kind of infection and that the scientists from the lab are chasing the silver lion because it escaped from this facility. Sarah's father and Theo were complications they hadn't expected and so they killed Theo and are now hunting Sarah and her group, her father and the infected lion. Sarah and Sam realize that whoever is responsible for creating the infection now want to cover up the research and will be returning to the lab to finish destroying what remains.

In a small trailer, Sarah makes a truly shocking discovery; three scientists who are infected and completely silver, locked in a room. The scientists who are in advanced stages of the infection are incoherent and in obvious distress. In the trailer, Sarah and Sam come face to face with Dr. Carl Monaghan, who admits that he created a metal that is "alive", - a type of inorganic life. Dr. Monaghan explains "Metalcium is inorganic, and yet it self-replicates. It has a kind of metabolism. It adapts to changes in its environment....Just little cells of metal at first...It was when we began adding lead that its true potential was realized." Avani fills in the details for the others, that metalcium sneaks "into an organism's system by hiding behind a mask of lead." Monaghan admits that he had hoped to use his discovery to heal but, instead the metalcium began attacking them, converting every cell into metal.

The doctor explains that they came to Kalahari because their research could be conducted in secrecy and it is rich in minerals which they required for their research. Once Monaghan realized the danger he tried to stop the research, but Corpus, the company funding the research, refused. Now Corpus has sent out Tony Abramo to clean up the mess, by killing everyone involved and everyone who knows about the research. Monaghan tells Sarah and Sam that they must leave immediately.

Sarah knows they have to get to safety and tell the world about the deadly infection but with Abramo on their tail, her father still missing, and the possibility that they have all been exposed to infection, the likelihood of her getting to Ghansi is beginning to seem remote.

Discussion

Jessica Khoury's novels are characterized by unique stories involving futuristic science in the style of John Wyndham. The story in Kalahari is centered around a new virus, Metalcium, that has been created in a lab, and which gradually converts living tissue into metal, eventually killing its host. Although this twist makes Kalahari an intriguing read, it doesn't appear until Chapter Eight. Instead the first hook is the disappearance of Sarah's father and the group's foray into the semi-desert to find him. From there the plot thickens leading the group from one adventure to the next. The resolution to the story flows quickly and ties up loose ends rather neatly.

Khoury immediately sets up the beginnings of a romance between Sarah and Sam, who seem to develop a rapport quickly, learning about each other as the story moves along. There are other pairings as well, although they really don't figure much into the story; Miranda and Kase are already a couple, but Joey, the group clown, likes the brainy Canadian, Avani. The minor characters are not as well developed, only enough to give readers a sense of who they are.

The author does have her main character, Sarah Carmichael experience an inner journey that parallels the physical one she undertakes in the novel. Sarah is not keen to spend time with teenagers. Her one experience in school in the United States was disastrous. "The kids in the class called me Mowgli and threw bananas at me during lunch." However, Theo encourages her, telling Sarah she needs to spend time with humans too. When Sarah first meets the five teens she judges them as shallow and uncaring  However, her opinion begins to change. When Miranda offers her diamond ring for Sarah to use on a stick, Sarah feels ashamed that she has made assumptions about Miranda without really knowing her. "When I studied wild animals, I always waited until I had all the facts before drawing conclusions about their habits and lives -- why couldn't I do that with people?" By the end of the novel, Sarah is glad to have met all five teens despite what they went through.

When Sarah becomes infected with the Metalcium which will be fatal, she begins to regret how she has lived over the past four months since her mother's death. She admits to herself that since her mother's death she hasn't cared much about life. "The world had been covered in a gray veneer, tasteless and uninteresting. She had been the sun that lit the savanna, and when she died, I'd been left in darkness, not caring whether I stumbled forever through the night or fell over a cliff and was lost. " However, now that she's caught the incurable infection, Sarah begins to see life differently. The change of heart has also come from her deepening relationship with Sam who has helped her to recognize that she could be happy again and "that the sun could rise on a world without my mom." Sarah also realizes that's she's never taken the time to cherish all the special moments in her life and that she's taken the time she's had for granted.

Kalahari has a few spots in the storyline which are weak. The first is the unrealistic actions of Sarah's father, Ty Carmichael, who leaves his daughter with five inexperienced teenagers in a bush camp, taking ALL their food supplies AND the satellite radio with him. Ty is not just going for a short drive in the bush, he's going to try to track what he believes are poachers, who present some degree of risk for him and Theo. It's unlikely that Carmichael, as a seasoned field researcher would have done this.

Secondly, although Sarah's father does manage to escape from Abramo and he has considerable skill as a tracker, he never seems to quite be able to catch up to Sarah and her group. That is, until conveniently at the climax of the novel, when Sarah faces down Abramo - making his sudden appearance seem somewhat contrived.

Kalahari is filled with interesting facts about  this semi-desert region of Africa including the wildlife, the climate and geography and about the Bushmen who still live in the area. Khoury spent time in Africa at the Mabalingwe Nature Reserve and in Botswana where she had the experience of tracking elephants, lions and leopards.

Kalahari is book three in the Corpus series. Overall, Khoury's interesting storyline works well, providing readers with plenty of suspense, some intriguing science fiction and a little romance in an exotic setting.

Book Details:
Kalahari by Jessica Khoury
New York: RazorBill, an imprint of Penguin Group    2015
354 pp.

Partials by Dan Wells

Partials tells the story of a post-apocalyptic society in what was the eastern seaboard of the United States in the year 2076. 

Mankind has been destroyed by the Partials who are genetically "engineered organic beings identical to humans". The Partials were built by a company called ParaGen to fight in the Isolation War, which they won handily. Five years later, they turned on humans. Faster and stronger than ordinary humans, linked to one another and highly efficient, they easily wiped them out. 

The Partials released the RM virus, a specially designed virus that quickly killed virtually every human being on the planet. Only a small percentage of humans were immune and survived the pandemic, but any children born afterwards, continued to die.

The survivors of the war and the virus, retreated to Long Island where they found food and shelter. There they organized a government consisting of twenty senators and built a Defense Grid to protect themselves. Meanwhile, the Partials disappeared, retreating inland. No one has seen a Partial in eleven years.

Since the Break, every human baby born has died from the RM virus. The youngest child, Saladin, is now fourteen years old. To try to counter deaths caused by the RM virus, the government enacted the Hope Act which required women of a certain age to have babies in the hope that some might survive. Instead, all babies have continued to sicken at birth and to die hours later. It seems that there is no hope left for the remnants of humanity.

When sixteen year old medic, Kira, learns that her friends, Madison and Haru, are expecting their first child, she is determined that she will find a cure for RM. Up until now, researchers have been studying only the babies and she feels that there is something they are missing. Kira discovers that the virus has been studied from all possible angles, except the source - the Partials who are immune. In order to do this, Kira realizes that they need to find a Partial and take samples or bring one back to study. She believes that somehow there is a connection between the two. When she approaches a senior researcher with her idea, she is told this is impossible. Undeterred Kira, organizes a group to go out to the mainland - to Manhattan, with the intent of capturing a Partial.

The sortie is successful and Kira manages to capture a male Partial. Although furious with her for doing so, the government gives Kira permission to study the Partial, named Samm, with the stipulation that after five days he will be destroyed. She begins her studies on him, but when the government attempts to use the captured Partial to gain total control over the society, Kira realizes she must free Samm and take him back to the mainland. Samm reveals to Kira and the Senators, that the Partials are dying off. ParaGen designed Partials with an expiration date. At twenty years of age, the process that halts their aging begins reversing and the Partials literally rot alive. Because of this Samm claims that he and his company were on their way to the human settlement to offer a truce, when they were attacked.

However, when the Senator's learn of the Partials predicament, they want no part of helping them. Instead they decide to publicly execute Samm and let everyone know that the Partials which were created twenty-one years ago will all be dead within three years. In an attempt to bring a group of rebels known as The  Voice back under government control, the Senators want to use Samm as the scapegoat for a bomb attack on Kira's lab.

As expected, things don't go according to plan and Kira is captured by a group of Partials intent on experimenting on her to try to find a solution to their expiration problem.  During her capture, Kira not only manages to piece together the information she needs, but encounters a shocking revelation that directly affects her future.

Discussion

Partials is an exciting novel, packed with action, suspense and multiple twists in the plotline. The main attraction of this novel is the human-like organic beings, the Partials, who are essentially engineered weapons. Despite having human DNA, they are considered non-human and treated with fear and disgust by society. But when Kira finally meets a Partial, Samm, she begins to understand that in many ways he is very much like humans. As she begins to understand him and know him better, her views on Partials change.

The novel has a strong female protagonist in Kira Walker, a courageous, take-charge young woman who is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity. Kira is supported by a large cache of unique characters; Marcus her boyfriend, Jayden who is the brother of Madison her best friend, and Partials, Samm and Heron. While Kira and Samm are well rounded characters, many of the secondary characters are not.

Partials has a well described post-apocalyptic world. Wells portrays a world ravaged by war fought only too effectively by genetically engineered soldiers and a ruined humanity. The reader is presented with a harrowing view of life where every single baby dies. It is a society without hope and no future.

There are several weak points in the novel. The idea of the RM virus is incredibly complex and because it is gradually revealed throughout the story, it was difficult to follow Kira's eventual deciphering of how it works. The division of the  novel into disparate time chunks is also confusing. The first part is the present, followed by Part 2 which takes place three months later, followed by Part 3 which is titled Four Hours Later.

Despite these minor flaws, Partials is one of the better dystopian young adult novels. It touches on the issue genetic engineering and the difficult and unexpected problems that might arise from engineering new human-like life. The dramatic conclusion of this novel suggests an exciting second novel in the series.

Book Details:
Partials by Dan Wells
New York: Balzer & Bray 2012
470pp.