Yellow Fever Ravages Philadelphia

Fever 1793

By: Laurie Halse Anderson

Summary:

Philadelphia, 1793.  Yellow Fever Strikes.  Mattie Cook's world is turned upside down.  People are dropping like flies in the city.  Chaos, looting, and crime skyrocket as the city tries to combat Yellow Fever in the sweltering summer sun.  Mattie's mom soon gets infected and sends Mattie out of the city to stay safe.  But danger follows Mattie as she fights for her survival. 

Teaching Tips:

The best thing about this book will also be the most challenging for some readers.  The dialogue, setting, and lifestyle are all historically accurate.  Laurie Halse Anderson does an amazing job of portraying what life was like in 1793!  

1) Frontload vocabulary for your students as they read each chapter.  Discuss what the terms are and how they related to life in 1793 before they read.  Decide what words you want to frontload, and what words you would like your students to grapple with and decipher using context clues. 

 2) Have students write questions they have on sticky notes as they are reading.  When you confer with your students go through their annotations and discuss together.  Fever 1793 is a great book for questioning and inferring. 

 3) Discuss the appendix with your students once they finish reading the book.  Knowing that these events really happened to men, women, and children makes this powerful book even more impactful. 

Additional Resources:

  Bookrags- Study Guide, about the author, character analysis and more.  Great place for teachers to find information for a novel study. 

Eyewitness to History- Great site containing additional information regarding Yellow Fever in 1793.

Bob Arnebeck-Bob Arnebeck is a historian who analyzes Anderson's book, discusses the accuracies of the text, and goes into great detail of what life was like for Philadelphians at the time of the outbreak.