Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio
In Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio, author Peg Kehret takes a hard, realistic look at polio. Although young readers today might only associate the word “polio” with a vaccination, this account gives them a well-written look at the devastating physical and emotional effects of the disease.
In 1949, families reported 42,000 cases of polio in the U.S. Out of all the people in the author’s hometown, polio only struck her that year. The author certainly writes in an approachable, familiar way, and readers will be hooked from the first page on.
Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio details the author’s diagnosis, treatment, frustration, and pain. Perhaps the chiefly startling part of the book is her description of the sudden onset of the illness. Surprisingly, it came simultaneously with no warning and left 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 had to live for part of her adolescence in an artificial, restricted environment.
In the Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio’s epilogue, Kehret describes her current battle with post-polio syndrome. It 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)
