Killer Underwear Invasion! How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories by Elise Gravel
Review by Laila el Mugammar, Children's Services Librarian, Central Library
How do we educate our children and ourselves about the dangers of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and bias in a world where information moves at unprecedented rates?
Elise Gravel, the Quebec-based author and illustrator of ‘Pink, Blue and You: Questions for Kids about Gender Stereotypes’ (2022) returns with the answer in this comprehensive non-fiction graphic novel. Fans of Corey Silverberg and Fiona Smyth will love this approach to discussing contentious subject matter.
With its vibrant, colourful illustrations and a language difficulty level comparable to Dav Pilkey’s ‘Dog Man’ and Aaron Blabey’s ‘The Bad Guys’, ‘Killer Underwear Invasion!: How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories’ is highly accessible to early elementary and middle-grade readers, who are increasingly targeted for online radicalization.
Rather than plainly stating recent examples of fake news and prescribing platitudes to readers like "do your research” - a difficult task to fulfill for people with no formal information literacy education - Gravel keeps the text relevant and timeless as the book’s characters who encourage one another to identify and examine their own biases and acknowledge the ways they affect their information habits.
Through Gravel’s two unnamed characters, we learn about disinformation in history, the role that artificial intelligence, doctored photographs, and heightened emotions play today and the incentives people have for creating and distributing fake news (Gravel highlights money from ad revenue, notoriety and power).
The text provides age-appropriate examples of the harm caused by disinformation – such as people using household products as cure-alls, littering because they don’t believe climate change is real and losing trust in doctors, scientists, or other experts. Readers can expect to encounter vocabulary words such as: confirmation bias; disinformation; conspiracy theories; news media; reporter; fact-checker; columnist; commentators; satire.
Gravel leaves the reader with practical and actionable ways to stop the spread of disinformation such as reading beyond the headlines, keeping your emotions in check, and consulting a handy list of words to look out for.
‘Killer Underwear Invasion!’ is a classroom and home essential for anyone looking to bolster their knowledge of media and information literacy, or anyone looking for a child-friendly reference tool.