Product Description

Ten years ago, In a riveting story of courage and hope, Peg Kehret wrote of months spent in a hospital when she was twelve, first struggling to survive a severe case of polio, then slowly learning to walk again. The book deeply touched readers of all ages and received many awards and honors. This anniversary edition includes an updated and extended epilogue about the author's experiences since the original publication. It also includes twelve pages of new photos and a lengthy section about polio, past and present. This 10th Anniversary Edition will inspire a whole new generation of readers. Those readers who already love it will find themselves reaching for it one more time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121010 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 179 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780807574584
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6-Although young readers today might only associate the word "polio" with a vaccination, this well-written account gives them a hard look at the devastating physical and emotional effects of the disease. In l949, there were 42,000 cases reported in the U.S.; the author was the only one stricken in her hometown that year. She writes in an approachable, familiar way, and readers will be hooked from the first page on. The author details her diagnosis, treatment, frustration, and pain. Perhaps the most startling part of the book is her description of the sudden onset of the illness, coming with no warning and leaving her paralyzed. 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. In the epilogue, Kehret describes her current battle with post-polio syndrome, and brings readers up to date on the lives of her fellow patients and friends at the Sheltering Arms Hospital. An honest and well-done book.
Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, NY
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 3^-5. This heartfelt memoir takes readers back to 1949 when the author, at age 12, contracted polio. Using fictionalized dialogue, she describes her seven-month ordeal--her diagnosis and quarantine, her terrifying paralysis, her slow and difficult recuperation--and the people she encountered along the way. Kehret supplies a few words about the illness in a foreword, but because there is little sense of how medicine has evolved since her hospitalization, some children may find the vivid picture she paints scary indeed. Scary, too, is the epilogue, in which Kehret admits to having post-polio syndrome. Curious children who love Kehret's middle-grade thrillers may pick this up, but since there's little about her life as a writer, it will most likely be children interested in medical issues who will follow through. Stephanie Zvirin

From 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. (Nonfiction. 8-13) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Taking Small Steps
In Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio by Peg Kehret, Peg has plenty of friends, a brother, and two loving parents. She's the average middle school girl. How much more normal can you get? One day while in choir class, she has this terrible muscle spasm. That's the beginning of what made her unique.
Peg's temperature rises, and is taken to the hospital, only to find out she has polio, the only case in her town of that year. Peg is immediately put into isolation, where she becomes paralyzed from the neck down, and cannot breathe properly. She develops not only one type of polio, not two, but three types. The author made me feel like I was there, witnessing Peg's discomfort.
Read about Peg's feelings as her polio worsens, then gets better. Share her triumphs and disappointments. You'll be caught up in this book, and you won't want to put it down.
Peg Kehret tells what happens in Peg's fight against polio. The author really makes you feel like you're there. I think people of all ages looking for a good drama will really enjoy this book. It teaches you what happens when you're willing to try anything to get things the way you want them. This book takes you away from your world, and into Peg Shulze's.

MorgTC & CBTherese

Kristies Review for Small Steps
Kristie Loftus
12/6/04

Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio
Peg Kehret
0807574589

Have you ever thought of what it would be like one day, waking up, feeling completely fine, and then you have a muscle spasm, and you find out later that you have a disease that can severely hurt you, or even kill you? In the book, Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio, Peg comes to find that she has three different types of polio. She started off with just a muscle spasm, thinking it was no big deal. She later finds out she has polio. Then she finds out that not only does she have polio, but three different types. She meets a few people in her journey through different hospitals. This story is a page-turner; it's amazing to see how strong some people really are, not on the outside, but on the inside as well.
This book is incredible. People think that their lives are so terrible, but really when you think about it, and you read this book, you realize things aren't as bad as they seem. I mean, I am not one that loves to read, but to hear someone else's story, and about there life, it's shocking. I honestly, would never be able to deal with what she went through. She went from hospital to hospital; she dealt with the mean nurse that made her put hot rags on her skin to help loosen her muscles. I would never be able to handle the stretching, and the hot rags or any of that. It shocked me to hear that polio can kill you. Some of the girls in the room that she stayed with had polio also, Alice has had it since she was little, and her family didn't want a blob sitting/laying around all day. One of the other girls had to lay in an iron-lung, because her lungs were not strong enough to let her breathe on her own. It's sad how none of them can walk very well because of polio. They either walk with walking sticks, wheelchairs, or they walk very slowly with out anything. I could not put the book down. I thought about my life compared to Peg's and the other girls, I would be stupid to try to make people feel bad for me considering what other people go through. I think anybody who likes biographies would enjoy this book. Like I said before, I am not a reader, but I could not put it down. It's hurtful to read about other people's problems, but you learn that life isn't as bad as you might seem to think it is.

Struggles With Polio
Small Steps: The Year I got Polio should be read by teens,because it shows how to overcome struggles. It is about a young girl who has been dearly loved all of her life, when suddenly she is ripped out of a loving home and forced to live in a isolation ward. One of her struggles is being paralyzed from the neck down. She cannot move any part of her body except her head. Peg is faced with many hardships throughout the book. For instance she has to endure Sister Kenny treatments which are extremely painful. Overall this book was a fantastic novel about a young girl facing obstacles.