Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio
By Peg Kehret
Recommended for grades 4-8
Polio was a much feared disease in the
Peg Schulze was a 12-year-old school girl happily involved with the start of 7th grade when she suddenly began to experience muscle pain and spasms, weakness, and a high fever. By the next day, she was paralyzed from the neck down. The author vividly describes her terror on waking up paralyzed and alone (isolated to prevent spreading of the disease) and upon finding out that she had contracted not one but three different types of polio. Because of this, the virus affected not only the muscles in her arms and legs but also the muscles controlling her breathing, swallowing, and speech. She relates her panic at being told by an insensitive nurse, “Do not call me unless you can’t breathe,” thinking to herself, “How was I supposed to call for help if I couldn’t breathe?”
Though she survived the acute stage of the illness, the author was faced with months of often painful physical therapy treatments and the possibility of never walking by herself again. She describes the close friendships she formed with her four roommates at a rehabilitation center, the fun they managed to have there, and her fear of never fitting in again with her friends and school back home. Small Steps is an engrossing book and will give readers a good sense of what it was like to endure the effects of this terrible disease.
Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio is located in the Biography section of the KPL Youth Department.
Reviewed by Laura Abbott
KPL Youth Department Clerk
