Keeping Clean: Kids Books to Talk About Germs, Hygiene and Disease

microscope
Microscope. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1555337

We are still in the mist of a pandemic and good hygiene is an integral tool for keeping ourselves and others safe and healthy. Below is a list of books for children related to germs and good hygiene practices as well as pandemics, diseases and illnesses. These books can help you talk to kids about the importance of good hygiene as well as learn about previous pandemics and other illnesses and diseases to help put COVID-19 and its challenges into historic perspective. All of the books below are available as either e-books or e-audiobooks and can be borrowed from home.

Hygiene Practices

good hygiene why we keep clean go wash up germs are not for sharing

germ free squeaky cleam covid-19

Practice Good Hygiene by Katie Marisco

Why We Keep Clean by Rosalyn Clark

Go Wash Up: Keeping Clean by Veronica Rooney and Amanda Doering Tourville

Germs Are Not For Sharing by Elizabeth Verdick and Marieka Heinlen

Keep It Clean and Germ Free by Cecillia Minden

Squeaky Clean (All About Hygiene) by Kara McMahon and Barry Goldberg

How Can I Help During Covid-19? by  Emily Dolbear

 

Diseases and Illnesses

Icky influ epidemic science comics

bubonic people of the plague Malaria what is a pandemic?

Ick! Yuck! Eew! Our Gross American History by Lois Miner Huey

Influenza: How the Flu Changed History by Barbara Krasner

Tracking an Epidemic by Tamra B. Orr

Science Comics—Plagues: The Microscopic Battlefield by Falynn Koch

Bubonic Panic: When Plague Invaded America by Gail Jarrow

People of the Plague: Philadelphia Flu Epidemic 1918 by T. Neill Anderson

Malaria: History of Germs by Jim  Ollhoff

How Has Covid-19 Changed Our World? by Kara L. Laughlin

What Is A Pandemic? by Kara L. Laughlin

Fiction

yellow fever

An American Plague: The True and Terrify Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy and Pat Bottino