Kirkus Reviews
From a writer known for her fiction, a moving memoir about a 12-year-old who got polio in 1949 in Austin, Minnesota. Kehret (Earthquake Terror, 1996, etc.) describes the disease, the diagnosis, the severe symptoms, treatments, physical therapy, slow recovery, and return home with walking sticks—and how she was forever changed. After her fever broke and she lay paralyzed in the hospital, her parents delivered a big brown packet of letters from her classmates. "I had a strange feeling that I was reading about a different lifetime . . . none of this mattered. I had faced death. I had lived with excruciating pain and with loneliness and uncertainty about the future. Bad haircuts and lost ball games would never bother me again." There are touching black-and-white photographs of her roommates, who had already been there for ten years. Kehret's were the only parents who visited her each Sunday, and soon "adopted" her fellow polio victims.
A simple, direct, and sometimes self-deprecating style of writing tenderly draws readers into Kehret's experiences and the effects of the disease firsthand. Almost a half-century later, this lovely book refocuses attention on what matters most: health, love of family, friends, determination, generosity, and compassion.
From the Publisher
1996 Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction 1997 ALA Notable Books for Children 1997 Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Readers 1997 Pen Center USA West Literary Award 1998 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award (Vermont) 1998-1999 Mark Twain Award (Missouri) 1998 Joan Fassler Memorial Book Award 1998-1999 Texas Bluebonnet Award, Runner-Up 1998-1999 William Allen White Master Reading List (Kansas) 1998-1999 Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award Master List 1998-1999 Sequoyah Book Award Master List (Oklahoma) 1998-1999 Volunteer State Book Award Master List (Tennessee) 1998-1999 NH Great Stone Face Children's Book Award Master List 1999 Sasquatch Reading Award Master List (Washington State) 2000-2001 Iowa Children's Choice Awards Master List 2001 Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award Master List (Illinois) 2001 Young Hoosier Book Award 2015 Bluestem Book Award Master List
"She writes in an approachable, familiar way, and readers will be hooked from the first page on…Although this is an excellent record of the progress of the disease, it is also a fascinating account of how an ordinary girl with crushes and homecoming dreams had to live for part of her adolescence in an artificial, restricted environment…An honest and well-done book."—School Library Journal
"A simple, direct, and sometimes self-deprecating style of writing tenderly draws readers into Kehret's experiences and the effects of the disease firsthand. Almost a half-century later, this lovely book refocuses attention on what matters most: health, love of family, friends, determination, generosity, and compassion."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
