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

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

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

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

Influenza: How the Flu Changed Historyby Barbara Krasner

Tracking an Epidemic by Tamra B. Orr

Science Comics—Plagues: The Microscopic Battlefieldby Falynn Koch

Bubonic Panic: When Plague Invaded Americaby Gail Jarrow

People of the Plague: Philadelphia Flu Epidemic 1918by 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

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