Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson; My favorite All Time Book!!!!!!!!!!!!
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
On the heels of her acclaimed contemporary teen novel Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson surprises her fans with a riveting and well-researched historical fiction. Fever 1793 is based on an actual epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia that wiped out 5,000 people--or 10 percent of the city's population--in three months. At the close of the 18th century, Philadelphia was the bustling capital of the United States, with Washington and Jefferson in residence. During the hot mosquito-infested summer of 1793, the dreaded yellow fever spread like wildfire, killing people overnight. Like specters from the Middle Ages, gravediggers drew carts through the streets crying "Bring out your dead!" The rich fled to the country, abandoning the city to looters, forsaken corpses, and frightened survivors.
In the foreground of this story is 16-year-old Mattie Cook, whose mother and grandfather own a popular coffee house on High Street. Mattie's comfortable and interesting life is shattered by the epidemic, as her mother is felled and the girl and her grandfather must flee for their lives. Later, after much hardship and terror, they return to the deserted town to find their former cook, a freed slave, working with the African Free Society, an actual group who undertook to visit and assist the sick and saved many lives. As first frost arrives and the epidemic ends, Mattie's sufferings have changed her from a willful child to a strong, capable young woman able to manage her family's business on her own. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
The opening scene of Anderson's ambitious novel about the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged Philadelphia in the late 18th century shows a hint of the gallows humor and insight of her previous novel, Speak. Sixteen-year-old Matilda "Mattie" Cook awakens in the sweltering summer heat on August 16th, 1793, to her mother's command to rouse and with a mosquito buzzing in her ear. She shoos her cat from her mother's favorite quilt and thinks to herself, "I had just saved her precious quilt from disaster, but would she appreciate it? Of course not." Mattie's wit again shines through several chapters later during a visit to her wealthy neighbors' house, the Ogilvies. Having refused to let their serving girl, Eliza, coif her for the occasion, Mattie regrets it as soon as she lays eyes on the Ogilvie sisters, who wear matching bombazine gowns, curly hair piled high on their heads ("I should have let Eliza curl my hair. Dash it all"). But thereafter, Mattie's character development, as well as those of her grandfather and widowed mother, takes a back seat to the historical details of Philadelphia and environs. Extremely well researched, Anderson's novel paints a vivid picture of the seedy waterfront, the devastation the disease wreaks on a once thriving city, and the bitterness of neighbor toward neighbor as those suspected of infection are physically cast aside. However, these larger scale views take precedence over the kind of intimate scenes that Anderson crafted so masterfully in Speak. Scenes of historical significance, such as George Washington returning to Philadelphia, then the nation's capital, to signify the end of the epidemic are delivered with more impact than scenes of great personal significance to Mattie. Ages 10-14. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Inside This Book
First Sentence:
I woke to the sound of a mosquito whining in my left ear and my mother screeching in the right. Read the first page
Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
summer grippe, orphan house, fever victims
Capitalized Phrases (CAPs):
King George, Mother Smith, Bush Hill, High Street, President Washington, Nathaniel Benson, Benjamin Rush Letter, Free African Society, John Walsh, Master Peale, Mattie Cook, Miss Cook, Fourth Street, Cook Coffeehouse, Polly Logan, Captain William Farnsworth Cook, Reverend Allen, Pernilla Ogilvie, Stephen Girard
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Spotlight Reviews
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52 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
A girl fights to survive in the 1793 yellow fever epidemic., August 14, 2000
Reviewer: Rebecca Herman (USA) - See all my reviews
It's the late summer of 1793 in Philadelphia, and fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook helps her widowed mother and her grandfather run a coffehouse. Mattie resents her strict mother and dreams of expanding the coffeehouse and becoming wealthy. But her mother seems determined to find a wealthy young man to marry Mattie off to. But all of Mattie's concerns soon seem petty when an epidemic of yellow fever begins to spread throughout the city. Mattie's own mother falls ill and sends Mattie and her grandfather to stay on a farm in the countryside, where she hopes they will be safe. But they are turned away and forced to return to Philadelphia when a doctor mistakes her grandfather's cough for yellow fever. Mattie comes down with the fever and nearly dies, but is nursed back to health in a temporary hospital. But she and her grandfather return to the coffeehouse to find that Mattie's mother has vanished. They try to settle back into a normal routine, but a sudden tragedy soon leaves Mattie on her own. Now, in a world turned upside down, in a ghost city a shadow of its former self, Mattie must keep herself alive and care for a little girl orphaned by the epidemic. This was an excellant historical novel that brought to life the epidemic. Through Mattie's first-person narration, I became immersed in the daily events of her life and her fight for survival. Highly reccomended.
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fascinating yet distant, June 9, 2003
Reviewer: Gwen A Orel- See all my reviews
This is a fascinating account of a devastating fever epidemic in Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States, in 1793. Nearly overnight-- people contract the disease and die within the hour-- Mattie's life goes from being a slightly overworked teenage daughter of a proprietor of a successful coffee house, to a young woman struggling to survive in a city that's taken on the bleakness of a Mad Max film.
Yet somehow we never come as close to Mattie as we might, or as we do with the main character in Anderson's SPEAK. Mattie's thoughts are so much on survival and on food that at times the book feels a bit like a travelogue of a disaster. Salvation, when it comes, also seems abrupt. In the end, this is a quick way to get an immediate feel for a terrible time in history, but although we are told a lot about Mattie, her family, her hopes and dreams, somehow she stays elusive. Emotionally, the book is a little disappointing, but it's still well worth a read.
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Customer Reviews
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Great Story Set In The Time Of A Forgotten Biological Disaster, September 22, 2005
Reviewer: Ellie Reasoner (Mason, Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews
Laurie Halse Anderson shows how good a "teen girl" genre book can be in this amazing fact-filled tragic novel set during a time of extraordinary human crisis. In 1793, an epidemic of yellow fever killed one in ten citizens of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, formerly capital of our nation. Anderson's plot is set during that terrible summer as the teenaged heroine, Mattie, faces the outbreak and its manifold horrors at times alone, and sometimes with those she knows. As thousands are dying--as many as five-hundred per day in a city of fifty-thousand--those who remain in the plague-stricken town must also contend with looters, with brutal roaming criminals who have escaped the un-guarded prisons, with the absence of food and supplies, with the constant threat of fire, that ubiquitous foe of urban spaces during summertime. Shunned by those outside the city, soon deprived of the company of those she knew in her daily life, young Mattie is compelled to fend for herself and face the horrid madness of this time alone.
Anderson's novel recreates a time of almost unimaginable awfulness and simultaneously introduces an adolescent heroine whose bravery must surely have been like that of some real life Philadelphians who truly resided in that great city under siege by plague. Anderson also, I should mention, has crafted one of the best portraits of eighteenth-century US life I've ever read.
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Excellent book, September 8, 2005
A Kid's Review
For school Lit Circles i picked this book.I just couldn't
stop reading.It's about a girl named Matilda who lives in a town.Matilda starts hearing stories about a fever spreading when people start dying.She now has one goal, to stay alive.
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Excellent book, September 8, 2005
A Kid's Review
For school Lit Circles i picked this book.I just couldn't
stop reading.It's about a girl named Matilda who lives in a town.Matilda starts hearing stories about a fever spreading when people start dying.She now has one goal, to stay alive.
