Confined to sealed, sterile room.
no chance to ever leave the hospital – ever!
or is there??
The world knows Joe through the reality tv show that has filmed his battle with SCID since he was little, but the immunodeficiency disease means that he’ll never get to see the world beyond the view through his hospital window.
Read the first chapter here free, courtesy of the publisher.
Four walls, one window – this book was first published in the UK as The Bubble Boy – which title is better?
**kmm
Book info: Bubble / Stewart Foster. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2017. [author Facebook] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My book talk: Forever trapped in his London hospital room, Joe dreams of leaving this sterile zone of safety, like fellow no-immunities ‘bubble boy’ Henry in the US will soon do with NASA’s help – perhaps the 11 year old has his own superhero, just waiting to take him out!
Not fair than any common germ could kill him, that big sister Beth must go away to university, that the car wreck left them orphaned.
But Joe does talk to Henry on the computer every day (between school lessons) and watches movies and waits for the next visit by the TV crew who’s been documenting his life in the bubble since he was a baby.
This new nurse Amir might be a little crazy, talking about aliens and getting 607 channels of satellite TV into Joe’s hospital room somehow… and making a spacesuit for Joe, like the one NASA built for Henry.
What’s making Joe’s white blood cell count go wonky now?
Will Beth choose a medical school far from London?
Can Amir really help Joe get beyond the airlock door of his hospital room?
Joe hasn’t breathed outside air since he was a tiny infant, but perhaps he actually can venture out and look up into the entire sky….