Imagine being 14 years old and carrying out your daily tasks, like helping your family run the coffeehouse. Now imagine its summer and an ominous fever hits. Your mother falls ill with the sickness that turns everyone yellow. You and your grandfather have no choice but to flee the city. However, you're not allowed to flee because you may be sick. You're 14 and have to take care of your loved ones, find food, and find a way to survive. Now imagine, it's the year 1793, and there's no proper medicine to cure the Yellow Fever.

Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is about an ambitious and imaginative girl, Mattie Cook. Mattie is tired of her daily life. Her life is one that consists of watering the garden, going to the market, and other daily chores. She has dreams to make her family's coffeehouse into a much finer business. However when Yellow Fever hits her home in Philadelphia, she's forced to grow up and focus on something else, the struggle to stay alive and help those she loves stay alive.

Laurie Halse Anderson does an outstanding job in telling a story about a girl's struggle in the summer of 1793. Fever 1793 is outstandingly descriptive and creates a vivid picture of what Mattie sees and goes through. I could just imagine the abandoned streets and cries for help.

The characters in the story make the book that much more real. Mattie Cook really is a characterteenagers will be able to relate to. They can relate to her even more because Mattie is so ambitious and doesn't feel like doing everything a girl in 1793 is expected to. This makes her more like the girls today; therefore, girls would especially be able to relate.

Along with Mattie, there's her funny grandfather who's a retired soldier, but still pretends to be one. With her grandfather comes mimicking King George, his parrot. There's also Eliza, the coffeehouse cook and family friend. Also, there's Mattie's mother, who works incredibly hard and loves her daughter dearly, even though at times, it's hard to see.

I would definitely recommend this book. It's a compelling adventure and a struggle for survival. I think this book is best suited for sixth through eighth graders. It's also just a great read for anyone older! Both boys and girls would enjoy Fever 1793, an amazing novel based on real events in history.