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Confession: I started writing this review about a year ago, then it sat, incomplete, as a draft for months. I even wrote a booktalk for it in that time without finishing the review. But since Suzanne Jurmain’s The Secret of the Yellow Death: A True Story of Medical Sleuthing won the Middle Grade/Young Adult Non-Fiction Cybils Award last month, I figured I really should finish my review of the book.

So…

When you think of terrifying diseases today, yellow fever probably doesn’t top your list. A lot of people have never even heard of it. But over a hundred years ago, yellow fever was pretty scary stuff. Between the mid-1600s and 1905, over 230 major yellow fever epidemics were recorded in the US. One of the most famous epidemics occured in Philadelphia in 1793, when nearly 10% of the population died of yellow fever and thousands of people fled the city in hopes of escaping sickness.

By the late 1800s, scientists were aware of bacteria and germs and were starting to make progress against diseases like cholera and typhoid. Not yellow fever. The symptoms of yellow fever had been recognized for centuries: fever, chills, intense headaches, muscle cramps, nausea, black vomit, jaundice. Yet no one knew what actually caused yellow fever.

Then in 1898, the United States went to war. By the end of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. was in command of Cuba and the government soon grew concerned about the possibility of a yellow fever epidemic sweeping through U.S. troops stationed there. Or worse, soldiers bringing the disease home with them. So in 1900, four Army doctors were sent to Cuba to determine what caused yellow fever. Led by Major Walter Reed, the doctors pursued the most popular theories that had been put forth to explain how yellow fever spread, sometimes risking their own lives in their quest.

While Jim Murphy’s An American Plague focuses on Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Jurmain’s focus here is on, as the subtitle of the book puts it, the “medical sleuthing” conducted. She is less concerned with epidemics than she is the doctors tasked with solving this mystery and their methodology—the investigations and experiments undertaken as part of their research.

Jurmain writes in a wonderfully descriptive style that sets the scenes beautifully (e.g., “The lab didn’t look like much. It was an old wooden shack at Camp Columbia, stuffed with wooden tables, shelves, jars, flasks, test tubes, a hot oven for sterilizing, an incubator to provide the warmth needed for growing bacteria, and a couple of microscopes.” [p. 17]) and introduces readers to the doctors in a manner that’s sympathetic and engaging. The historical context is explained simply and clearly, as are the medical and scientific information needed to understand yellow fever. Jurmain utilizes short chapters to convey information that, in a book with a wider scope, or for an older audience, could easily be told in one chapter. But by dividing her account into tightly focused chapters, she enhances the momentum of the narrative, making it seem fast paced and even more suspenseful.*

Additional information about some of the people introduced throughout the book is given in the appendix, though Jurmain emphasizes that information about Cuban doctors involved is scarce. A glossary, chapter notes, photo credits, bibliography, and index comprise the rest of the backmatter.

I also have to say that I really appreciated the design of the book. No sidebars or awkwardly placed inserts that in

A True Story of Medical Sleuthing by Suzanne Jurmain Houghton Mifflin 2010 A compelling account of how early medical researchers discovered and isolated the causes of yellow fever in the early part of the 20th century. Don't start this book if you have just eaten, and I might make the same recommendation for the following description of the symptoms that open The Secret of the Yellow Death: at

The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students by Suzanne Jurmain. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. 2005. Personal copy. Review originally appeared at The Edge of the Forest.

Prudence Crandall was smart and a hard worker. She went to school, taught, saved, and then opened her own school for girls. One day a teenage girl approached her with a simple request: she wanted to learn so that she could teach. Would Miss Crandall admit her to the school?

Isn't that what every teacher wants, students eager to learn? Asking to come to school?

Except that Sarah Harris, the girl asking the question, is African-American. And the year is 1831. The town is Canterbury, Connecticut.

The Forbidden Schoolhouse is the account of how Sarah Harris's quest for education, so that she could teach others, led Prudence Crandall to open a school for African American girls and how the townspeople, the town, and the state, conspired to prevent the school from opening, and then to try to shut the school down. It is also an account of Crandall becoming a political activist, because before Sarah Harris asked her fateful question, Crandall was not active in the abolitionist movement.

One of the hardest things to do in works of history is to convey the point of view that existed in a different time. Jurmain presents the world of the 1830s, including the economic, legal and physical risks that Crandall took when she decided to open her school for African American girls. She also shows the courage of the students and what they were willing to put up with, in the pursuit of education. It is eye opening to the modern reader: the drive for education, and the prejudices that existed in the slave-free North.

The Forbidden Schoolhouse reads like an exciting work of historical fiction; yet it is all real. Jurmain does an excellent job with pacing, with keeping the reader on the edge of their seat with what will happen next. How far will the town and state go in wanting to shut down the school? How far is Crandall willing to go to keep it open? Jurmain includes detailed Appendices, letting the reader know "what happened next" to all the main people.

Another think I liked about The Forbidden Schoolhouse is that while it appears to be the story how one woman tried to change the world, Jurmain shows that it was much more than that. Crandall was one woman: but many people helped her, from the leading abolitionists of the day to the African American parents who were willing to pay the school fees and send their daughters to the school to the girls who went – and stayed – despite the abuse heaped on them by the townspeople who didn't want them in their town. And it also redefines what "to change the world" means: is it to open the school? To keep the school open no matter what? To bring an issue to the public? Does it matter whether the change takes place when you want it to, or 60 years later?


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