Patrick’s Wish. Karen Mitchell with Rebecca Upjohn. Photographs provided by Patrick4Life. Toronto, ON: Second Story Press, 2010. 24 pp., pbk., $7.95. ISBN 978-1-897187-70-8. Subject Headings: Fortin, Patrick, 1978-2001-Juvenile literature. AIDS (Disease)-Patients-Ontario-North Bay-Biography-Juvenile literature. Hemophiliacs-Ontario-North Bay-Biography-Juvenile literature. AIDS (Disease)-Juvenile literature. Grades 2-4 / Ages 7-9. Review by Ellen Heaney. *** /4

Patrick’s Wish is a personal account of a medical tragedy related by the authors, a teacher and a writer, in the voice of a girl whose brother suffered from hemophilia as a child in the 70’s and 80’s. The frequent transfusions required by his condition resulted in Patrick’s contracting HIV, which eventually became AIDS.

    Colour photos, presented in the style of a family album, take readers from Patrick as a bright-eyed preschooler, with a bruise around one eye, to him as a wheelchair-bound adolescent. Everyday events depicted are, at first, things like making snow angels and playing the piano. Later, they are visits to the hospital and fundraising walkathons.

     The story is told in the first person, and the naïve narrative style allows young readers to gain understanding of the subject by hearing about how Patrick’s sister felt at different stages of this family journey. The revelation of Patrick’s illness, coming after several pages of memories of early childhood, is wrenching:

“And then one day everything changed. It was the day I found out about Patrick’s wish. Mom and Dad said I was old enough to know. We all sat at the table: Mom, Dad, Patrick, my other brother Richard, and me.

Patrick sat next to me. His smile was gone. ‘Lyanne, I have a secret that I’ve been keeping for a while.’…

Mom told me that because Patrick needed so much blood for his hemophilia, it had to come from many people. But some of the blood he had used carried a virus in it call HIV.”

     Patrick dies at 23, but his death is referred to obliquely and in terms of his spirit and his wish to let people know about HIV/AIDS prevention.

    End matter offers information to children about the causes and symptoms of HIV/AIDS, headed “Some things Patrick would want you to know about HIV and AIDS”. The concluding sentence is, “And most of all, Patrick would want you to remember his wish: NO MORE HIV/AIDS.”

   Patrick lived before the current stringent blood testing became required in hospitals and clinics. Although HIV/AIDS is hardly eradicated, we can hope that fewer stand a chance of contracting it the way that Patrick did. Recommended for school and public library collections.

Recommended.

Ellen Heaney is Head of Children’s Services at the New Westminster Public Library, New Westminster, BC.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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