Red Blood Cell, White Blood Cell, and their team guide young readers on an exciting behind-the-scenes exploration of all the hard work going on to keep the human body healthy. Adorable characters, diagrams, and simple language help make the scientific adventure fun.

Cells at Work! Picture Book has story by and art by Kumi Makimura. English translation is done by Alethea Nibley & Athena Nibley and lettering by Abigail Blackman. Published by Kodansha Comics (September 15, 2026). Rated A.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Don't be fooled by the title – this isn't a picture book in the genre sense. It's absolutely for the picture book age group, albeit the higher end because of some of the vocabulary, but it reads right-to-left and is entirely in panels. This is manga, and as such, may require a little adult guidance if the child has never encountered manga before, although Kodansha does include the usual “how to read manga” page.

It's also a terrific book for the biology-inclined curious kid. Closely adapting the first two chapters of the original Cells at Work! manga for younger readers, this covers bacterial transmission and how scrapes are healed. Both stories have just enough peril that readers can get invested in Red Blood Cell's survival and lean into the idea that White Blood Cell is a hero within the body, making it easily understandable and fun. The designs are all simplified versions of the originals, which gives the germs and bacteria a fun Power Rangers feel. It plays out like a superhero story within your own body, and that's a great way not only to learn about cellular biology, but to hook young readers, especially if they're going through a superhero phase. The peril is clearly present, but not terrifying, although I could see some squeamish kids freaking out over the idea of the villains invading their bodies. But the framing of sneezes as missiles removing germs is immensely appealing, and for kids already into body humor, it could easily feed into both that and imaginative play in general.

While the concepts are well explained for younger readers, some of the vocabulary is likely to be tricky for the intended audience. “Neutrophil” is hard but not impossible, but some of the bacteria names could look like jumbles of letters, so this isn't likely to be a good choice for reluctant readers, who could find themselves frustrated by vocabulary. Some adults may not love that Red, the blood cell perpetually in peril, is female while White, the savior, is male, but that's easily enough explained away and could be a good starting point for discussions about gendered roles and the issues with them. And honestly, the mixed-gender platelets are more likely to be the roles younger readers see themselves in, and they're shown as competent and heroic.

If you've got a little biologist in your life, this would be a good choice. It's more of a read-along book than one you just hand to a child, but that's not a bad thing.

Erica Friedman
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This informative, fun, and colorful summary of the Cells at Work! series, written by Kumi Makimura based on the original work by Akane Shimizu, is a great gift idea for the kid in your life who is curious about how things work.

We meet Red Blood Cell, a hard worker who brings oxygen to the various parts of the body. Red is always scurrying around trying to find the right blood cell for delivery, but the human body is complicated—and a scary place. A virus at large can devastate the body, so White Blood Cell is there to protect Red.

If you are familiar with the anime, you'll recognize the storyline, as White hunts down a rogue virus, and the Platelets and Whites team up to handle the invasion of Bacteria from a scrape. Some of the pathos (especially in regard to the Platelets) is lost, but every cell's role is easy to follow and very informative. The narrative focuses on the ways blood cells regulate and heal the body, while still keeping the essential personalities of the characters as they appear in anime and manga.

This is a book for early readers. The main comic narrative is punctuated by short essays about the kinds of cells and their roles, bacteria, viruses, even a look at the Spanish Flu, and the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Each section is short enough and simple enough for an older child to understand and a younger one with some adult guidance. There is also a double-spread maze, helping Red to carry the oxygen to the various body parts.

Adult guidance and supervision are called for, for several reasons. As you may be familiar with from the anime and manga, White blood cells are fighters, and they do take a beating, while Platelets and Red blood cells are mostly unable to do much on their own. Both the Pneumococcus virus and the Bacteria could potentially frighten a young child, presuming of course that they aren't already into body horror, as many children are.

Cells at Work! Picture Book 1: The Great Bacteria Vs. White Blood Cell Battle! is a wonderful entrée into science, anatomy, medicine, and health for a young mind that is interested in knowing about the bodies they live in.

Bolts
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Have you ever wanted Cells at Work but simplified to the degree that a kindergartener could read it? Then, boy, do I have a very small picture book for you. This volume of Cells at Work has a very narrow target audience, but I also do think it is a necessary one. While the original Cells at Work is entertaining, the fact that a chunk of its humor leans so heavily on hyper violence does make it hard to act as an educational title for younger readers. Now this volume basically takes the first volume of the original Cells at Work and shrinks it down both in style and length.

All of the characters are a lot more chibi, the plot lines are only a couple of pages long, the violence is explicitly reduced, and it does seem to be more of a focus on educating younger readers rather than entertaining adults. This is the version of Cells at Work that I think you could find at your local library as potential recommended reading for younger kids because it still does cover a lot of the cliff notes on learning about the human body. The explanations about all of the basics are still here, each chapter is only a few pages long, and the book even spells things out a second time to readers at the end of every chapter. Granted, if you've already read the original Cells at Work or are already familiar with the franchise, then there is nothing new for you to enjoy. Still, picture book versions of stories like this are important for young readers, so I appreciate it, even if reading it personally felt very redundant.