Queen of Hearts: Coming of Age in a Hospital Bed in Mock Printz 2026

Dec 20, 2011 Barbara rated it really liked it

Shelves: death, ncbla

Fifteen-year-old Marie-Claire Cote and her two siblings watch in horror as their beloved vagabond uncle contracts and then dies from tuberculosis. Then all three children in the Manitoba farm also are diagnosed with TB and moved to a nearby sanitorium where they are expected to rest and recover. The author describes vividly the uncertainty associated with the disease and its sufferers as well as the various treatments used to help the patients regain their health. The passages detailing how they ...more

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Nov 05, 2011 Richie Partington rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, ya

30 October 2011 QUEEN OF HEARTS by Martha Brooks, Farrar Straus and Giroux, August 2011, 214p., ISBN: 978-0-374-34985-1

"Sister Therese, walking by my desk with her yardstick, pokes me awake on several occasions throughout the fall and early winter. One December day she keeps me after school. She stretches her long legs in front of her, her cracked black shoes showing below her long black skirts. Sister Therese and I love and hate each other in equal measures.
"Today I love her. I wasn't looking ...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Mark rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult-literature, death-and-dying, sibling-relationships, coming-of-age, historical-fiction

"In my heart of hearts, I've always wanted a sixteenth birthday party. Yet even though it falls on an apparently special day, winter solstice, I'm not holding my breath - no pun intended.

Sunday again. Six days after me pneumothorax, the great day has at last arrived, finding Signy, the rick city girl, and me, the poor country girl, sitting, as usual, on bedpans.

TB, I'm beginning to discover, is a democratic kind of disease. The only requirement seems to be that you have lungs."

Marie-Claire Cote "In my heart of hearts, I've always wanted a sixteenth birthday party. Yet even though it falls on an apparently special day, winter solstice, I'm not holding my breath - no pun intended.

Sunday again. Six days after me pneumothorax, the great day has at last arrived, finding Signy, the rick city girl, and me, the poor country girl, sitting, as usual, on bedpans.

TB, I'm beginning to discover, is a democratic kind of disease. The only requirement seems to be that you have lungs."

Marie-Claire Cote, 15, lives with her family in Manitoba, Canada - not far from the Pembina Hills Tuberculosis Sanatorium. World War II is beginning to intensify, and while Marie-Claie's family is not in any danger from soldiers, TB is a real and present danger. At the beginning of the novel, an uncle arrives at the family's door, gaunt and tired from years on the road. It turns out he is in the final stages of TB, and after his death, Marie-Claire and her two younger siblings also contract the disease. All are admitted to Pembina, and Marie-Claire narrates her story as she worries over her brother and sister, and tries to come to terms with her new life inside the sanatorium's walls. She, her fellow patients and their doctors "chase the cure," and readers learn about a host of treatments that were attempted on TB patients. Marie-Claire is an entirely unsentimental patient, and feels bitter resentment at having her youth cut short by this sick twist of fate. Her story is presented with emotional honesty, and Marie-Claire finds her own definitions of family and friendship.

This novel was reminiscent, for me, of the author's TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A HEARTLESS GIRL, in the way Brooks presents a female character who is not afraid to speak her mind, and clash with those in authority. But in this case, there's very little Marie-Claire can do to change her situation. She's sick, and needs to go through the treatments if she has any hope of leaving the sanatorium. The way Brooks presents her anger and eventual acceptance of her family's reaction to the disease is moving, as is the way Marie-Claire finds her way to friendship, even when that's the last thing she's looking for. A very strong, moving and emotional novel. ...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Carol Royce Owen rated it liked it

I read this book because it has been chosen as a Vermont Dorothy Canfield Fisher finalist for 2012-2013. It is an historical fiction piece about a young teen-aged girl who is placed in a tuberculosis sanitorium along with her younger brother and sister. I was fascinated by the treatments that occurred, even stopping to look up facts on the Internet, especially that they would have the patients sleep outside, even in the cold. In fact, while reading the book I talked to an old friend who had an u ...more

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Dec 04, 2013 Anita rated it really liked it

Shelves: women-s-literature, 2014, library, yal, world-war-ii-literature, canadian-literature

I enjoyed this book and felt that I learned a lot from it about a time period which is largely ignored by history and literature. Reading the victim's experience in a sanatorium during the tuberculosis outbreak in Canada helped me understand how society largely ignored and even feared these innocent people.There is no real happy ending in this book; although, Marie Claire comes away from the sanatorium having fallen in love and made a friend. Many other patients did not have so fortunate an expe ...more

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Jun 13, 2014 Emily rated it liked it

Shelves: ya-historical-fiction

I learned a great deal about how TB was treated back in the 1940s. I felt that this author developed her characters well, but she ended the book very abruptly. She needed to either speed up the pace or lengthen the novel to make the story's ending satisfactory. ...more

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