Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT A moving and well-wrought story.–Susan W. This powerful novel, illustrated with contemporary objects and documents, portrays an illness that is unfortunately making a comeback. She is a resilient and perceptive character who will not be defined by her illness. With awareness of World War II being fought in Europe, a staff member insults Evvy because of her German surname. Sarah, a new patient, becomes Evvy’s friend and shares the secret that she is Jewish.

Many archaic medical treatments are used on the patients, including thoracoplasty, the removal of a rib to allow a lung to collapse and heal. Yet death is always close at hand, and Pearl, who had the privilege of leaving the sanatorium for a day, returns happily with gifts of decorated paper fans for her friends, only to die in the hallway from “throwing a ruby,” a hemorrhage. Stony Nurse Marshall, dubbed Old Eagle Eye by Dena, assigns privileges when the girls cough up less bloody sputum and show signs of improving health. Evvy misses her family, especially her twin brother, but adjusts to life at Loon Lake, a complex of buildings almost as vividly depicted as the staff and patients it houses. She is confined to bed rest in a ward with three other adolescent girls, Beverly, Pearl, and Dena. The book contains a great theme to always keep fighting for your life and always look ahead into the future and be positive.Gr 5-8–Evvy Hoffmeister, 13, arrives at Loon Lake Sanatorium in Minnesota in the early 1940s in hopes of being cured of tuberculosis. However, in the midst of all the death around them, the girls at least had each other, and the friendships that were formed were so sweet. The book was sad and alarming at the deaths and extent of the illness. I have not read many books like this one and I was captivated with the girls' journeys of getting better or getting worse. I loved the backdrop of WW2 and the elements of Judaism and fear, a nice opening into the past. I also really liked the posters, flyers, propaganda, and other historical illustrations that added to the story and showed the culture of America in that time period.

We should be truly grateful for the extent and power of medicine today. Old forms of medicine consisted of risky surgical procedures. I learned a lot about tuberculosis and I was shocked at some of what the girls went through.

Breathing Room by Marsha Hayles