Purple Death

“Combining cogent accounts both of a worldwide tragedy and some classic medical detective work, this is certain to please and to sober a wide audience.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Illustrated with riveting black-and-white photographs as well as haunting pencil sketches, this short and easily accessible book traces the desperate search for the cause of and cure for the flu. Especially intriguing are the descriptions of efforts to obtain ‘live’ samples of the virus.” –VOYA

“Soft, charcoal-pencil drawings capture the somber mood… . The painstaking and heroic deeds scientists must take on in order to identify a disease and develop a cure will be interesting to budding scientists.” –School Library Journal

“With the same mysterious, intriguing style of his previous books about frozen mummies, the author tells a gripping story of the influenza pandemic of 1918 that infected two billion people.” –Children’s Literature

”[Getz] writes clearly and dramatically, whether he’s describing how vaccines work, how pneumonia was treated before the discovery of antibiotics, or what today’s researchers are doing to find the flu virus preserved in the lungs of frozen bodies… . And always there’s the question, What if there’s a pandemic today?” –Booklist

David Getz works as a science staff developer in the New York City school system. He has written several nonfiction books for children, including Frozen Man, Frozen Girl, and Life on Mars. He lives with his wife and two daughters in New York City.Peter McCarty is the author and illustrator of Little Bunny on the Move and the illustrator of several of David Getz’s books, including Frozen Man and Frozen Girl. He graduated from the New York School of Visual Arts, where he now teaches. He lives with his wife and daughter in New Jersey.