Reading FEVER 1793 was actually quite interesting (read: terrifying) in the aftermath of COVID. Having actually lived through a quarantine and pandemic, it's kind of morbidly fascinating to note the parallels: idiots who think the fever can't happen to them, bad science, bad medical advice, deniers, mass panic, suspicion and paranoia. As yellow fever grips Mattie's Philadelphia town, compromising her family's livelihood, she ends up being forced to make do through terrible extremes just to survive another day.
It doesn't actually hold up that badly. The pacing is woefully slow but there is a lot of action and the fever provides some real stakes. For a middle grade novel, it's quite dark. There is illness and death and people acting selfishly. One of Mattie's friends is a freed slave and we get to know a little bit about her story, but racism really isn't touched upon that much here. This is, after all, a kids' book written in the early 2000s. I wouldn't say it's a keeper but it helped me while away the hours.
3 out of 5 stars
There are still boxes and boxes of these at my school. The seventh grade used to study them as a crossover unit between the history curriculum and the science curriculum, and there were projects galore with viruses, etc. I don't think it's been used in the last 15 years. I still have the library copy, but I think you're right that it isn't the best book for a novel unit right now. We also have lots of copies of Cooney's Code Orange that modern readers would probably find slow as well. Hope you are enjoying revisiting the books of your past!
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