Talk to your kids about healthy eating by taking care of their gut microbiome. Reviews of these four books can help you find the right book for your family!

A Garden in Your Belly. Written and Illustrated by Masha D’yans. Ages 7-11. Published by Millbrook Press.

Summary: Masha D’yans’s ethereal, whimsical illustrations transport readers while teaching about the helpful gut microbiome.

A Garden in Your Belly is a great introduction to the human gut microbiome for younger kids. Using analogies “…a  great river with folds and turns.”(the intestine) that “nourishes a garden in your belly full of life…” (the gut microbiome), good, accurate information is provided throughout. The information at the back of the book provides nice additional detail on what is a microbiome.

Topics covered by A Garden in Your Belly:

• Where your microbial “seeds” planted at birth come from
• The diversity of microbes and the importance of diversity
• The role of microbes in digesting food and influencing emotions and mood
• The importance of taking care of microbes, including playing outside and eating healthy foods

While A Garden in Your Belly. is targeted at 7-11 year olds. I would use it for much younger children. It’s a fun way to explore the idea of helpful bacteria and why we need to eat fruits and veggies. The whimsical illustrations and the language speaks to a younger audience and is a great entryway book. Reading this book and then following up with Gut Garden or The Good Germ Hotel could make for interesting dinnertime talk. Inside Your Insides is a better reference book or maybe you use it for a deeper dive into your kid’s questions.

Gut Garden: A journey into the wonderful world of your microbiome. Written and illustrated by Katie Brosnan. Published in 2020 by Cicada Books Limited. Ages 5-10

Summary: Each pair of pages in Gut Garden provides a multitude of facts in a series of snapshots about the beneficial microbes that influence your health. The book begins by introducing the wide diversity of microbial life and the study of microbes, then turns inward to human gut microbes.

Topics covered: Gut Garden focuses on the beneficial (mutualistic) bacteria.

• What they do and how they interact with our immune system.
• How the beneficial microbiome can be disturbed and then restored using poop (fecal transplants) and future probiotic drinks.
• That each person has a unique microbiome, which starts at birth. I really love the side panels with information on how birth mode and first foods influence a person’s unique bacterial diversity.
• Loved the inclusion of a recipe for sauerkraut, when talking about prebiotics!

I did feel that the wording could have been clearer in places. For example, in the virus description if says viruses “cannot replicate or evolve”. They can as SARS-CoV2 has shown us, but they can only do so inside a host not on their own. It also bothers me when scientific names aren’t italicized. A small detail and not necessarily in the author’s control.

My favorite part is that the end of the book suggests that since microbes outnumber people, “…perhaps we are only here to serve our microbes and provide them a comfortable home”. NOW you’re talking!

Gut Garden respects its readers and seeks to educate them about an important, hidden part of their own bodies. I enjoyed that Gut Garden didn’t try to follow the “good bacteria/bad germ” narrative but instead illustrated the complexities of the microbiome while talking about Helicobacter. Gut Garden is really a nice way to get solid information about the gut microbiome in an understandable way. It received the North Somerset Teachers Award in the Information book category. A winner in my book too!

See these additional on-line resources:

Click to access Gut-Garden-Activities.pdf

The Good Germ Hotel: Meet Your Body’s Marvelous Microbes. Written by Kim Sung-Hwa and Kwon Su-jin. Illustrated by Kim Ryung-eon. 2020 What on Earth Books. Age 5-10

Summary: A cartoon gut bacterium educates his 9 year-old human “hotel” about the many ways that digestive system bacteria are helpful not harmful.

The Good Germ Hotel uses cute, engaging illustrations to relay tons of facts about the role of gut bacteria in digesting food and keeping out pathogens.

Topics covered:

• First we are introduced to bacteria living on the skin, armpits, nose, stomach, and mouth, then turns inward.
• Similar to “The Gut Garden”, we follow the breakdown of food through the digestive tract.
• The Good Germ Hotel discusses the immune system, antibiotics, antibiotic resistance, probiotics, and prebiotics.
• Both books do a nice job talking about the role of microbiologists in human health, antibiotic discovery, and probiotics.

It bothers me that the book says that “Microbiologists have invented a type of drug called “antibiotics” to kill bad bacteria and treat the infections they cause.” Bacteria and fungi make antibiotics naturally. Scientists discover these natural antibiotics. The description of the germ-free mouse experiment makes it sound like bacteria come only from food and the environment. While this is true to some extent, the only way the “clean mouse” was without its microbiome due to the mouse being born from a germ-free mom or via c-section to avoid the baby mouse naturally gaining its microbiome at birth. Those comments aside, it’s hard to keep the main text focused and not get too detail-heavy, but maybe a footnote or information in the back could get this additional information across.

My favorite part is the ending. The bacterium enters the end of its travels through the digestive system by landing *plop* in the toilet in a nicely formed poop. Overall, The Good Germ Hotel is an informative read with a cute narrator giving readers a tour of the beneficial microbes of their body.

Inside Your Insides: A Guide to the Microbes That Call You Home. Written by Claire Eamer. Illustrated by Marie-Eve Tremblay. 2016 Kids Can Press. Age 7-10.

Summary: An excellent reference book on the human microbiome for kids. With a table of contents and detailed index, it’s easy to find information that is clear and understandable. Cartoons and microbe jokes lighten up the main scientific information. Sidebars provide additional fun facts or history. 

Topics covered by Inside Your Insides includes:

• What microbes and microbiomes are.
• The historical “war on microbes” contrasted with today’s understanding of beneficial microbes
• The human microbiome from skin to digestive system
• The need to “save the microbes” instead of waging all-out war.

Inside Your Insides is different from the other human microbiome books reviewed here. It includes skin and eyebrow mites, fungi, and bacteriophages, alongside the typical focus on bacteria. It is excellent to see this broader treatment of the human microbiome.

Inside Your Insides was one of the earlier (2016) human microbiome-focused kid’s books. Overall it stands up to the test of time; however, some of the science has changed. The chapter “The Making of Our Microbiome” about when babies are colonized by bacteria needs rewriting.  The research this chapter was based on did not have the proper controls and is considered incorrect by the vast majority of the infant microbiome community. Such controversies in science are common and can get ugly if people let their egos become caught up in the process of science. I’ll write a more detailed post about this specific situation another time. It is a great reminder that the study of human microbiomes is still relatively new. The techniques used are only a decade old and we’re still learning the pros and cons of these techniques. Despite this one chapter, I would still recommend I Inside Your Insides for its other strengths. It’s a great reference book.

As a microbiologist, mom, and science communicator I am THRILLED that so many books are beginning to be written and published on beneficial microbes and microbiomes, especially human gut microbiomes. Microbes are essential to our health and the health of our planet.

The COVID pandemic is ushering in another wave of “bad microbe” themes and fear of microbes. Yes, we need to be cautious. Yes, we need to wash hands. Yes, we need to wear masks (right now and right). HECK YES, we need to get any and all vaccines (flu, measles, and SARS-CoV2 (COVID19)) available. However, as my friend Dr. Mark Martin says – Pathogens are the juvenile delinquents of the microbial world. The majority of bacteria, archaea, fungi, and even viruses – aren’t harmful and are actually helpful. As humans, we focus on these because we don’t want to get sick. To be healthy though, we also need to focus on our helpful bacteria and take care of them. Each of these books does a good job getting that idea across.

The publishers provided me with a copy of some of the books reviewed above. Any links within the post to purchase the books are Amazon Affiliate links. Whatever you purchase at Amazon within 24 hours of clicking on the affiliate link will provide a small commission (less than sales tax) to support the costs of maintaining this blog. 

Check out other kid and adult books on microbes in my Book Review section!

Favorites for kids include June Almeida: Virus Detective!, Don’t Lick This Book, Tiny Creatures

Favorites for adults include Dirt is Good, The Good Gut, Welcome to the Microbiome