Breath Author:Donna Jo Napoli Salz is a boy afflicted with a strange disease -- he coughs and coughs and cannot catch his breath. The only way he can stay alive is by doing things that make him an outcast: joining a coven, throwing himself into a handstand when the fits overtake him, avoiding the ale that his brothers and all the townspeople drink. — Salz lives in a time of s... more »uperstition and fear, in the medieval town of Hameln. This summer his bare-bones existence has been more fearsome than ever. Salz's father and brothers are affected by horrifying fits. The rest of the townspeople are gripped by a plague of madness. And the entire town is visited by a pestilence of rats -- rats that crawl in their soup bowls, swarm in their sick beds, jump into their babies' cradles. Only Salz remains unaffected. But is that because he is innocent? Or is he the devil himself?
Only Donna Jo Napoli can conjure a world like this -- so real that readers will fill their lungs with the fetid air of Hameln with every breath they take.« less
ISBN-13: 9780689861741 ISBN-10: 0689861745 Pages:272 Reading Level: Young Adult Rating:
During the Middle Ages people with afflictions were generally outcasts as is Salz who suffers from cystic fibrosis. Follows the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and what really happened to the town of Hamelin