Kingfisher Knowledge is a groundbreaking series for readers hungry for information on today's hot topics. Lively, engaging text, packed with information, accompanies stunning photographs that enhance each chapter. Amazing, state-of-the-art digital artwork guides readers into the fascinating heart of the subject. This learning adventure does not stop there - information panels throughout lead the reader to further discovery. Each chapter offers website links, book lists, places to visit and career information. Microscopic Life explores the lives of the tiny creatures that live around you, in you and even on you! These creatures are so small, you cannot see them unless through a microscope. And they are very tough - microscopic life lives in the coldest climates and on the deepest ocean floors, and existed on earth long before humans. However, despite their strange shapes and names, most microscopic creatures such as plankton and pseudoscorpions are harmless to humans, but others, such as viruses and bacteria can be deadly. Discover all types of microscopic life forms and the places they inhabit, and wonder at how many live so close to you.

Richard Walker is an award-winning author who has written many books for all age groups in the areas of natural history, human biology and science. He has a BSc and PhD in zoology, in which he studied parasitology, and he spent several years teaching biology and science in London schools before becoming a full-time writer based in London. Richard won the 2002 Aventis Prize for Science Books Junior Prize. Professor Peter C Doherty jointly won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1996 for the discovery of how the immune system recognizes virus-infected cells. He currently works at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the University of Melbourne, Australia. Dr John Grainger is chairman of MISAC (Microbiology in Schools Advisory Committee) and works at the University of Reading.