As a five-year-old, Shelley Fraser is known for mischief.<br><br>On Halloween in l949, she fancies her brother's devil costume and persuades her mother to hem it up for her. But her plan to scare the total baloney out of the neighbor's babies backfires. <br><br>At kindergarten, she throws a six-year-old birthday party never to be forgotten, falls in love at juice time, and learns to read. <br><br>Six weeks into first grade, she becomes one of over 30,000 falling down the Polio Hole—which is the way she thinks of the illness sweeping across America. <br><br>During those years of dealing with braces, crutches, the loss of muscles that will never come back, she finds she is still very much who she always was, only more aware of the world's miracles. With a lasting lesson from her night visitor in the Isolation Hospital and a second chance as the Halloween Queen with her sweetheart Richard, she also earns a dog named Buddy, a horse with the nickname Lightn', and the friendship of a woman who teaches the enchantment of letters that can be read only with a mirror.<br><br>Shelley's battle to overcome the nightmare illness that changed America is woven into the story of the scientific development of the vaccine that nailed shut the Polio Hole. The efforts to bury the Hole worldwide is a major challenge of the twenty-first century.
Оглавление
Shelley JD Mickle. The Polio Hole
1. THE WIPE OUT
2. PARALLEL LIVES
3. THE UPSIDE - DOWN LETTER
4. SALK AND SABIN BEAT THE SYSTEM
5. MY NIGHT VISITOR
6. 2,680,000 DIMES AND THE HOUSE GUM BUILT
7. 17,000 MONKEYS
8. THE DEVIL SUIT AND SALK NAMES ME
9. CUPID STRIKES DURING JUICE TIME
10. THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES
11. THE TRAP OF THE NUTTER BUTTERS
12. I BECOME A PREACHER
13. ICE CREAM MONEY
14. TAKING CHANCES
15. SHOOT OUT AT THE DIRT MOUND
16. A DOG NAMED BUDDY
17. THE BIG TEST AND A DO - OVER
18. DECISIONS TO BE MADE
19. TRIALS AND THE DEATH OF ROBERT
20. NAILING THE HOLE SHUT
EPILOGUE
CHRONOLOGY. MAJOR EVENTS IN THE WAR ON POLIO
ONE LAST STORY. BOPPING BUGS
Отрывок из книги
We are three blocks from home. “Hold your legs out. Don’t get near the spokes.” My brother is bossing, pedaling, standing up, his backside going up and down, up and down. I’m perched on the bike’s back fender with my fingers gripping the seat like a cat’s claws. My brother has a rule: if I touch him, I have to pay for it, like having to clean his stinky fish tank. But he does have a point since, when I hold onto him, I unbalance him, which puts both of us in danger of a wipe out. “I mean it now. Don’t touch me. And don’t get near the spokes.”
I both adore and hate my brother; but most of all I want his admiration, so I hold my legs out like boat oars on either side of the back wheel. It is October, 1950. I have been in the first grade six weeks. Today my teacher has let me out early, and my brother has gotten the same permission. After all, it’s not every day your parents become famous.
.....
“What did you teach?”
In the second block toward home, I’ve concentrated so hard on doing what my brother has told me not to do, that I do it. The toe of my saddle oxford sneaks into the back spokes, and bang!—the bike throws us like a rank mule. Sprawled on the packed gravel, we look at each other. The back wheel is bent; the bike will not move. My shin looks like a carrot rubbed down a cheese grater. My brother is mad, but he is scared, too. “I told you not to do that! Now we’re going to miss the show.”
