(For the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be featuring one book each day, that begins with that day's letter, that made an impression on me. This means that for some reason, I didn't just read that book and forget about it. No, I still think about it after some period of time has passed.)
Title: Alex, the Life of a Child
Author:
Frank Deford
Original Publication Date:
1983
Date I First Read: 1987
Basic Category: Nonfiction /
Memoir / Tearjerker
Basic Summary: Alex’s father recounts her life and death.
What I Remember About the
Book: I remember most about learning about cystic fibrosis and how it
works. I was just about 12 when I read
this, about a year or so after the TV movie aired. The movie made me sob, and the book was no
different. For some reason, the part of the book that stands out most in my memory now is when the author described his daughter in the hospital when
she was very young, when she was being diagnosed. I was in the living room of the house we
lived in, and sitting in my favorite chair while reading that part. I also remember how the author described his daughter's clubbed fingers. At the time, I had no idea what this looked like, and there was no Internet to look it up.
What I Took Away From the
Book: How genetics generally work. If
both parents have the recessive gene for cystic fibrosis for instance, then
each one of their biological children have a 25% of having the disease. This knowledge came in very handy in high
school biology a couple of years later.
Rating
(1-5 stars): 4.5 stars – I was an
impressionable tween. I also had no idea that my first child would die of complications from his birth defects. It was not related to genetics (that we know of.) I also had no idea that I would see what clubbed fingers looked like in real life on my own baby.
