Five Pages a Day: A Writer's Journey Book

Right after I read this memoir, a friend posted a story about an anti-vaccine parent, and the polio vaccine in particular. I immediately recommended this memoir and Kehret's "Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio" to her and all the concerned parents and educators commenting on her post. Kehret's description of her battle with polio as a child is haunting, in particular her brief and powerful memory of the little girl who shared her hospital ward, a girl so horribly crippled by the disease that her parents took her to the hospital and abandoned her there, no resources to care for her, no hope for her to ever leave. Heartbreaking, and in Kehret's able prose, all the more so for the matter-of-fact way she laid out the situation and comprehended the parents' choices. And the still joyful view of the girls living together and playing together in the ward, all the while seeing Peg improve and knowing that some day she would go home and some would not. The other great thing about this writer's memoir is the descriptions of her persistent pursuit of writing, taking on writing contests and challenges, sending out drafts and receiving rejections, her call from the Library of Congress to check on her career as a writer and their surprise to know that the same Peg Kehret wrote plays, novels, books of wedding vows, and a manual on how to refinish pianos! It's a real pleasure to read about how she finds her way to children's literature at mid-life. Her optimism and work ethic is inspirational. I am very glad I found this on the biography shelf at my new school. As a school librarian, and adoptive mom, I was entrance by her belief in herself, her creation of her family through adoption with no regrets about not being able to having biological children, her refusal to take the "nos" of life and let them pull her down.