Organ Transplants (Medical Marvels)

Amazing medical breakthroughs are made every day. In the past decades, medical researchers have cured diseases that were once deadly and devised new methods to heal that were once unimaginable. This title follows the development of organ transplants, including early attempts at transplantation, groundbreaking discoveries and the doctors who made them, and where the science is heading in the future. Learn how organ transplants work and how scientists continue to extend and improve human life with new discoveries. Sidebars, full-color photos, a glossary, and well-placed graphs, charts, and maps, enhance this engaging title. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards.Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

*Starred Review* There’s so much information packed into this compact book that students and browsers will come away with a real sense of how transplants work, as well as their history and future. It begins with the story of a teen’s heart transplant in 1998—and if that doesn’t get readers’ attention, the facing photo of a doctor holding a human heart will. After a concise but informative chapter on how transplantation works, the book goes back 5,000 years to the first discussions of transplants and then traces the procedure’s fits-and-starts progression over the centuries. Among the other well-presented topics are the procedure’s successes and failures, organ donation, survival rates, animal experimentation, and the ethical challenges for both donors and recipients. The book is handsomely designed, with interesting full-bleed photographs often facing a page of text. Sidebars, highlighted in yellow, pertain to the topic and never feel intrusive. Source notes and a bibliography, as well as a fine design, add to the title’s usefulness for researchers. Grades 6-9. --Ilene Cooper