I am looking forward to seeing the book in print in June, 2013 from McGill-Queen’s University Press! From the press blurb:
In the first study of its kind in Canada, Mona Gleason explores how children faced death, endured illness, both serious and fleeting, and learned to be healthy in the context of their families and communities.
What was it like to be young and sick in the past? Who taught kids to be healthy and what were they expected to learn? How did gender, race, and class make a difference to that experience? Asking fresh questions about a key period of health and welfare reform in Canada, Small Matters explores how medical professionals, lay practitioners, and parents understood their young patients and how children responded. Through the extensive use of oral histories, Gleason sheds new light not only on children’s attitudes towards their medical treatment, but also on the largely unexplored experiences of hospitalization, disability in childhood, and importance of teachers and health curriculum to the development of ‘healthy habits.’ With a theoretically sophisticated framework that develops size and age as critical categories of historical analysis, and particular attention paid to the experiences of marginalized children, Small Matters marks a major contribution to the history of children and youth in Canada.