Joyce Moyer Hostetter. Blue. Honesdale, Penn.: Boyds Mills Press, 2006.

In this book for younger readers, thirteen year old narrator Ann Fay Honeycutt describes life in Hickory during World War II. When Ann Fay’s father goes to fight in the war, he leaves her in charge of the family. She trades in playing and climbing trees for the grown-up responsibilities of tending the vegetable garden and taking charge of her younger siblings. When a polio epidemic hits her town and she is stricken with the disease, Honeycutt is hospitalized and becomes close friends with another patient, an African American girl her age. The novel is based on the true story of a hospital for polio patients in Hickory in the 1940s.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.