[book review] Melanie's Marvelous Measles by Stephanie Messenger
Tina is worried when several students, among them her friend Melanie, don’t show up for school. There has been an outbreak of measles, a horrible disease she heard used to kill kids. Jacob, an arrogant classmate, declares he has been vaccinated and is therefore immune. But Melanie was vaccinated, too, and yet she and other vaccinated classmates fell ill.
Tina returns home deeply troubled by this, and has a heart-to-heart with her mother wherein it is revealed that vaccines are worse than useless-actually harmful! Tina’s mother, savvy and questioning, did her own research after vaccines harmed Tina’s brother, and made the balanced decision not to vaccinate her other children. But Tina is armed with a healthy, vitamin-rich diet, and her mother sees this as an opportunity for her child to actually strengthen her immune system by catching the dreaded virus, and to develop a natural, healthy immunity, so that she doesn’t catch it as an adult, when symptoms tend to be worse. So, they go to visit her friend, bearing vitamin A-rich gifts for her recovery, as a mission of goodwill and education and a way to infect Tina. Melanie’s mother is lectured on the truth about vaccines. And Tina, unvaccinated, melon juice-drinking Tina, armed with knowledge and antioxidants, developed not a sniffle from a disease the establishment says is one of the most contagious known. And as for vaccinated little Jacob… well, guess who has measles now?
The curtain is pulled back from the bogeyman of measles, built up by public health officials to be a killer; a light is shined on the monsters under the bed, the true face of a common fear revealed. It is a postmodern fairy tale of reversal wherein “evil” is actually a force for good and the cure is worse than the disease. Nonconformist and questioning parents will love this book, unconventional but nonetheless enshrining the universal values of courage, love, zest for life, and faith in oneself.
It may seem like a cautionary tale encouraging children to question traditional authority and trust in their own abilities, a call for self-reliance, but it’s an allegory with the subtlety of a fairy tale. In that sense it reminds me of The Little Prince or The Giving Tree. It is a spiritual successor to The Book of Job, writ for children. It is a meditation on the value and inevitability of suffering. This is a meditation on the duality of fear-the healthy fear of mortality that leads us to live to the fullest, the unhealthy fear that leads us to trust in poisons and machines. For there is no sure thing in this world and anybody who tries to sell you a certainty is a charlatan; truth is objective, fluid, and felt from the heart, that “mommy instinct” the philosopher McCarthy talked about, more powerful in this postmodern world than studies that treat children like a homogenized mass. It is a story of true science, in the Holmesian fashion, simple deduction and logic. Kids will notice that the kids in the book who caught measles had a diet of junk food, and that vaccination did not protect them, but a healthy fresh diet did protect unvaccinated Tina. This completely mirrors the pattern in real life, and impresses upon children the value of personal, anecdotal evidence, with small, intimate sample sizes, rather than placing faith in huge faceless population studies. For, as Orwell said, sanity is not statistical, and we need to look for a more personal truth.
We see an example of this dangerous hubris wrought by mainstream science in Melanie’s classmate Jacob, who was vaccinated and therefore thinks himself invincible. Extending the allegory of measles as challenge one can’t help but think of the foolishness of those who think life will always be good to them. Ultimately this unfortunate young man gets sick; the vaccine did not protect him-another reminder that you cannot put trust in external charms or wards to protect yourself-but actually harmed his immune system. Combine this blow with the fact that he put all of his trust in that charm-the vaccine-and took no precautions of his own with good food and exercise, so he was completely vulnerable and debilitated by the disease, whereas Melanie, who while vaccinated still lived a healthier lifestyle, was up and playing cheerfully when infected, rash and all. It is a tragicomedy of Shakespearian proportions, and an illustration to kids that authority figures don’t always know what is right, just because they’re authority figures.
The story also addresses a larger issue. Children don’t have the sense of urgency they once had when it comes to living their lives. Today they are content to be indolent, complacent, sit inside and play video games or waste time on an iPad (and this sedentary lifestyle, ironically, further makes them vulnerable to disease), because they have not yet been instilled with a sense of their own mortality. It’s harder to blow off sledding this year when there might not be a next winter, or a next snow day, even. Kids are more eager to go outside and explore today when they might be paralyzed tomorrow. Death has become removed from their lives with the improvement of hygiene and so they are not confronted with dying and disabled siblings and friends, and the unspeakable grief of parents who bury their children. We’ve denied them this rite of passage with our overwrought fear of childhood disease. And that, really, is what is so marvelous about Melanie’s measles-they teach us to live every moment to the fullest, as it may be our last. Joy is all the more joyful when contrasted with sorrow; a life is all the more dynamic for the breadth of experience. Disease is a humbling, spiritual experience-one cannot appreciate health until one has been ill, one cannot embrace life without facing death. We coddle our kids in such a way as to evoke the spiritual equivalent of the hygiene hypothesis: with no exposure to the dirt of this world, kids become unable to tolerate any challenge later in life.
And so young Tina has to choose-will she put her trust in an ineffective, superstitious ritual, or trust in her own body’s ability to protect itself? Will she willingly contract this disease and undergo the trial by fire that can only further temper her mind and body? This is a call for children to to stand up for what they know is right, even when everybody around them thinks it is wrong. It means standing up to teachers, authority figures, doctors, ignorant parents of other children. It means pointing out that the emperor is not only naked, he is also covered in poison! That is the true meaning of courage. And even if measles can be deadly-is a long life of complacency and fear better than a short one of wonder and joy? It is the quality in our years, not the quantity. It’s time to let our little angels free the shackles of fear, and let them fly, like the butterfly on the cover suggests.
The title is a reference to the one of the works of beloved children’s author Roald Dahl, a man in whose spirit the book follows with its whimsical humor and thumbing of the nose at authority. Were he alive today he would find it delightful.
Tina returns home deeply troubled by this, and has a heart-to-heart with her mother wherein it is revealed that vaccines are worse than useless-actually harmful! Tina’s mother, savvy and questioning, did her own research after vaccines harmed Tina’s brother, and made the balanced decision not to vaccinate her other children. But Tina is armed with a healthy, vitamin-rich diet, and her mother sees this as an opportunity for her child to actually strengthen her immune system by catching the dreaded virus, and to develop a natural, healthy immunity, so that she doesn’t catch it as an adult, when symptoms tend to be worse. So, they go to visit her friend, bearing vitamin A-rich gifts for her recovery, as a mission of goodwill and education and a way to infect Tina. Melanie’s mother is lectured on the truth about vaccines. And Tina, unvaccinated, melon juice-drinking Tina, armed with knowledge and antioxidants, developed not a sniffle from a disease the establishment says is one of the most contagious known. And as for vaccinated little Jacob… well, guess who has measles now?
The curtain is pulled back from the bogeyman of measles, built up by public health officials to be a killer; a light is shined on the monsters under the bed, the true face of a common fear revealed. It is a postmodern fairy tale of reversal wherein “evil” is actually a force for good and the cure is worse than the disease. Nonconformist and questioning parents will love this book, unconventional but nonetheless enshrining the universal values of courage, love, zest for life, and faith in oneself.
It may seem like a cautionary tale encouraging children to question traditional authority and trust in their own abilities, a call for self-reliance, but it’s an allegory with the subtlety of a fairy tale. In that sense it reminds me of The Little Prince or The Giving Tree. It is a spiritual successor to The Book of Job, writ for children. It is a meditation on the value and inevitability of suffering. This is a meditation on the duality of fear-the healthy fear of mortality that leads us to live to the fullest, the unhealthy fear that leads us to trust in poisons and machines. For there is no sure thing in this world and anybody who tries to sell you a certainty is a charlatan; truth is objective, fluid, and felt from the heart, that “mommy instinct” the philosopher McCarthy talked about, more powerful in this postmodern world than studies that treat children like a homogenized mass. It is a story of true science, in the Holmesian fashion, simple deduction and logic. Kids will notice that the kids in the book who caught measles had a diet of junk food, and that vaccination did not protect them, but a healthy fresh diet did protect unvaccinated Tina. This completely mirrors the pattern in real life, and impresses upon children the value of personal, anecdotal evidence, with small, intimate sample sizes, rather than placing faith in huge faceless population studies. For, as Orwell said, sanity is not statistical, and we need to look for a more personal truth.
We see an example of this dangerous hubris wrought by mainstream science in Melanie’s classmate Jacob, who was vaccinated and therefore thinks himself invincible. Extending the allegory of measles as challenge one can’t help but think of the foolishness of those who think life will always be good to them. Ultimately this unfortunate young man gets sick; the vaccine did not protect him-another reminder that you cannot put trust in external charms or wards to protect yourself-but actually harmed his immune system. Combine this blow with the fact that he put all of his trust in that charm-the vaccine-and took no precautions of his own with good food and exercise, so he was completely vulnerable and debilitated by the disease, whereas Melanie, who while vaccinated still lived a healthier lifestyle, was up and playing cheerfully when infected, rash and all. It is a tragicomedy of Shakespearian proportions, and an illustration to kids that authority figures don’t always know what is right, just because they’re authority figures.
The story also addresses a larger issue. Children don’t have the sense of urgency they once had when it comes to living their lives. Today they are content to be indolent, complacent, sit inside and play video games or waste time on an iPad (and this sedentary lifestyle, ironically, further makes them vulnerable to disease), because they have not yet been instilled with a sense of their own mortality. It’s harder to blow off sledding this year when there might not be a next winter, or a next snow day, even. Kids are more eager to go outside and explore today when they might be paralyzed tomorrow. Death has become removed from their lives with the improvement of hygiene and so they are not confronted with dying and disabled siblings and friends, and the unspeakable grief of parents who bury their children. We’ve denied them this rite of passage with our overwrought fear of childhood disease. And that, really, is what is so marvelous about Melanie’s measles-they teach us to live every moment to the fullest, as it may be our last. Joy is all the more joyful when contrasted with sorrow; a life is all the more dynamic for the breadth of experience. Disease is a humbling, spiritual experience-one cannot appreciate health until one has been ill, one cannot embrace life without facing death. We coddle our kids in such a way as to evoke the spiritual equivalent of the hygiene hypothesis: with no exposure to the dirt of this world, kids become unable to tolerate any challenge later in life.
And so young Tina has to choose-will she put her trust in an ineffective, superstitious ritual, or trust in her own body’s ability to protect itself? Will she willingly contract this disease and undergo the trial by fire that can only further temper her mind and body? This is a call for children to to stand up for what they know is right, even when everybody around them thinks it is wrong. It means standing up to teachers, authority figures, doctors, ignorant parents of other children. It means pointing out that the emperor is not only naked, he is also covered in poison! That is the true meaning of courage. And even if measles can be deadly-is a long life of complacency and fear better than a short one of wonder and joy? It is the quality in our years, not the quantity. It’s time to let our little angels free the shackles of fear, and let them fly, like the butterfly on the cover suggests.
The title is a reference to the one of the works of beloved children’s author Roald Dahl, a man in whose spirit the book follows with its whimsical humor and thumbing of the nose at authority. Were he alive today he would find it delightful.