"Called a "magnificently crafted story...brimming with wisdom" by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the...

In 1952, when Georgie is eleven years old, her family moves to a new Indiana neighborhood where her teenaged neighbor has polio and is in an iron lung.

"This middle-grade novel takes place in Pittsburgh in 1952-53. The protagonist is Franny, a young girl of imagination, curiosity, and stubbornness. While recovering from polio, she begins a correspondence with a flea named Fleabrain"--

"In 1955, thirteen-year-old Stephanie Turner comes home from summer camp bursting with happy memories. When she awakes the next morning, her back and legs are stiff, her head pounds, and excruciating pains burn through her whole body... Is this polio, the dreaded disease she has heard so much about?" -- cover, page 4

Caring for a runt lamb helps Pixie gain empathy when, in the 1940s, her family moves to her grandparents' farm and her sister Charlotte contracts polio and is sent away.