Fear grips the world as a deadly virus threatens children with paralysis and death. When nine-year-old Linda Ellison comes down with polio, she is quarantined for months in a small bed covered by mosquito netting. Isolated from her school friends and sisters, her physical pain is compounded by loneliness. To cope, she struggles to "rememberize" poems, helped by two very unusual friends, a tarantula and a tree frog. In the process, she learns something very important about life, friendship and survival in an uncertain world.