Alison Reads

New York high school student Mitty Blake has to write a paper about an infectious disease and he has to use four books as sources, so he opens an old medical book he finds at his house and discovers an envelope containing scabs from the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1902. He crumbles one and inhales it, and later as he does more research he discovers the danger he and everyone around him is in. He doesn’t know if he’s going to get smallpox or not, so he waits out the 14 day-incubation period with mounting terror. This is a thriller full of information about infectious diseases (and the importance of vaccination). The high school students are true-to-life and there’s a fair amount of humor to lighten the story. Of greatest interest to high school students, middle schoolers should like it too. A YRCA 2008 nominee for grades 7-9.