Why We Need Vaccines: How Humans Beat Infectious Diseases

Vaccination is one of humanity's most effective and greatest discoveries.

Infections like the plague, smallpox and other deadly diseases have affected and killed people for thousands of years, but the invention of vaccines forever changed our relationship with these diseases. More recently the urgency of developing an effective vaccine during the COVID-19 pandemic brought vaccination to the public's attention. Simmering tensions around vaccine hesitancy, misinformation and mistrust of science came to the forefront.

Although an earlier form of protection against infectious diseases has been practiced for a long time, vaccines have only been around for 200 years. Why We Need Vaccines explores the history of vaccine discovery, the science of how vaccines work and the public-health achievements that vaccines have made possible. It also discusses vaccine mandates and inequality in access to vaccines on local and global scales. It challenges young readers to take responsibility for themselves, their families and their communities so we can all be part of the solution to take down infectious diseases.

Rowena Rae worked as a biologist in Canada and New Zealand before becoming a freelance writer, editor, trainer and children's author. She is the author of Salmon: Swimming for Survival in the Orca Wild series and Upstream, Downstream: Exploring Watershed Connections and Chemical World: Science in our Daily Lives in the Orca Footprints series. She also wrote Rachel Carson and Ecology for Kids. Rowena writes both fiction and nonfiction from her home in Victoria, British Columbia.

Paige Stampatori is an illustrator based in Kitchener, Ontario. She graduated from Sheridan College's Illustration program in 2020. Typically working in editorial illustration, Paige loves to create graphic, colorful images that are conceptually strong. Her favorite part of the creative process is the ideation stage. She finds it exciting to think of interesting ways to convey a message through a single image.