Blue
Joyce Moyer Hostetter has researched a fascinating look at the polio epidemics during WWII in this young adult fiction story. Ann Fay is thirteen years old when her father goes off to fight Hitler and leaves her to run the farm until he returns. She works exhausting hours and makes her younger siblings work too. When her four year old brother contracts polio and dies, she blames herself for working him too hard. Her bout with polio highlights the real ife "Miracle of Hickory" polio hospital in Hickory, North Carolina in 1944. I learned a lot about how polio was percieved and how doctors and nurses worked to save children from being crippled. Four stars!