Hot Zone, A Terrifying True Story by Robert Preston

When Robert Preston's Hot Zone was published in 1994, it was an immediate best-seller. Written in the style of a thriller, Preston describes what happens when an unknown virus breaks out at a monkey house in Reston, Virginia.

While it reads like fiction, the events actually happened. Nearly five hundred monkeys at a Reston research facility were dying horrific deaths. Caretakers suspect the monkey are dying of simian fever (harmless to humans) but they send a sample to USAMRIID as a precaution.

USAMRIID or United States Army Military Research Institute for Infection Diseases have the personnel and knowledge to test for level 4 hot agents e.g. Marburg or Ebola.

When the sample glows positively against known samples of the Ebola virus, the US Army know it has serious problem.

Yet there is one perplexing mystery. All of the known outbreaks of Ebola had come from Africa. This particular shipment of crab-eating monkeys came from the Philippines.

As it turns out, the agent is not Ebola Zaire at all but rather a new agent that Army researchers call Ebola Reston. 

Preston's work, which captures the fear and chaos that accompanies a breakout, is even more relevant today than when it was published in the 1990s.

Box Trolls

Did you know the Box Trolls is based on the book, Here Be Monsters, by Alan Snow? Elizabeth Cody Kimmel has written a novelization of the movie and its available from Scholastic. 

Everybody Paints: The Lives and Art of the Wyeth Family by Susan Goldman Rubin

Everybody Paints may be for young readers but adults will also enjoy this wonderful biography about this remarkable artistic family (the Wyeths). 

The book begins with pathfinder Newell Conver's story. His father thought art was nonsense yet Newell Conver Wyeth (better known as N.C. Wyeth) persisted, studied the craft, and became one of the most successful illustrators of his time.

Wyeth traveled West, wrote and illustrated "A Day with the Roundup" for Scribner's magazine, and married his sweetheart in 1906. Most people know Wyeth, however, for his illustrations of British stories:Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Robin Hood, and King Arthur.

Though all of his children were artistic, Andrew was the one who followed in his father's footsteps. Andrew is perhaps best known for the paintings "Braids" and "Christina's World" that use a technique called tempera on panel.

Andrew's son, James, became the third generation of Wyeths to take up painting. Jamie painted with combined mediums and had made portraits of the Kennedys, Andy Warhol, his wife and friends. Like his grandfather, James also illustrates children's books.