# An American Plague

**Author:** Jim Murphy
**Grade range:** Grades 6–10
**First published:** 2014
**Page count:** 201
**ISBN-13:** `9780547532851`
**ISBN-10:** `0547532857`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/an-american-plague
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

National Book Award Finalist: An account of the disease that ravaged eighteenth-century Philadelphia, written and illustrated for young readers. 1793, Philadelphia: The nation's capital and the largest city in North America is devastated by an apparently incurable disease, cause unknown... This dramatic narrative describes the illness known as yellow fever and the toll it took on the city's residents, relating the epidemic to the social and political events of the day and eighteenth-century medical beliefs and practices. Drawing on first-hand accounts, Jim Murphy spotlights the heroic role of Philadelphia's free blacks in combating the disease, and the Constitutional crisis President Washington faced when he was forced to leave the city—and all his papers—to escape the deadly contagion. Th

## Where this book is assigned

### Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal

- **recommended** · 6th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2004 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)
- **recommended** · 7th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2004 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)
- **recommended** · 8th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2004 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)
- **recommended** · 9th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2004 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)
- **recommended** · 10th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2004 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)

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