Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio is a memoir of author Peg Kehret's childhood experience of polio. The book won the Golden Kite Award in 1997.
Plot
In September 1949, Peg collapses at her school in Austin, Minnesota. She goes home with a high fever, and around midnight, she starts to vomit. Her parents take her to the hospital where she is diagnosed with three different kinds of polio. She spends a little time at Sheltering Arms before she is transferred to University Hospital because she needs a respirator. Peg is placed under an oxygen tent to help her breathe a little easier. of isolation but all of the things in her room are burned because they may contain the virus. Her new room has a roommate named Tommy who is put into an iron lung. Peg reads to him when she's feeling better, and they listen to The Lone Ranger. Every day, she changes the hot pack part of the Kenny treatment to hot baths instead. After she starts to recover, the so-called Mrs. Crab does the stretching exercises. After Peg improves, she is moved back to the Sheltering Arms hospital where she rooms with four other girls who have polio, Dorothy, Shirley, Alice and Renee, who later become her friends.
Characters
Peg: Main character and narrator of the story, diagnosed with polio.
Tommy: Peg's hospital roommate at University Hospital, in an iron lung.
Renee: Sheltering Arms roommate, who goes home for Christmas.
Shirley: Sheltering Arms roommate, who has the worst polio.
Alice: Sheltering Arms roommate, who has been there for ten years. Her parents didn't want to take care of her because she was so badly crippled, and she became a ward of the state.
Dorothy: Sheltering Arms roommate, who longs to be in leg braces to go home. She is able to return home, because her family builds her a ramp.
Mrs. Crab: Peg's physical therapist at University Hospital, whom Peg doesn't like. She gives her Torture Time: hot packs and stretching. Peg highly disliked her.
Art: Peg's older brother whom Dorothy adores. Art is a college student.
Dr. Bevis: Peg's doctor at University Hospital. Peg promises to walk for him one day.
Miss. Ballard: Peg's physical therapist at Sheltering Arms that Peg is very fond of and she is also very good friends with Pegs parents.
Kenny: A boy who plays in the Christmas pageant who helped Peg. He was going to be discharged the day after that.
Mom: Peg's supportive mother
Settings
The story takes place in Peg's school, Peg's house, at the Sheltering Arms, and at the University Hospital beginning in 1949.
