Osage Beach
Osage Beach, MO · Arts & Culture
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Columbia Daily Tribune
'Tiny but mighty' books that make a big impact
Each month, the Columbia Public Library offers selections from its collection related to a current best-seller or hot topic. Library Associate Stephanie Thompson compiled this month’s selections. While bigger and faster are often equated to better, let’s slow down and take a moment to consider something tiny that is, nevertheless, mighty. There is a proverb that says, “If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you have never spent the night with a mosquito.” Mosquitoes have the power to keep a person indoors for the bulk of the summer, just to avoid being covered in itchy bites. Worse yet is the fate of the millions of people who contract malaria from mosquito bites every year. Malaria parasites are invisible to the naked eye but can be deadly. Tiny but mighty, to be sure. Microbes like malaria parasites are defined as organisms that are too small to be seen without using a microscope. Not all microbes are bad, though. Consider the book, “I Contain Multitudes,” (Ecco, 2016) by Ed Yong. The author explains how humans, as with many other species, are not in some ways single organisms but actually homes for entire microbiomes of microorganisms. Many of our microbes