My Sister's Keeper facts for kids
My Sister's Keeper is a novel written by Jodi Picoult in 2004. It tells the story of a 13-year-old girl named Anna Fitzgerald. Anna lives in Rhode Island with her family.
Anna was born to help her older sister, Kate, who has a serious illness called leukemia. Leukemia is a type of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow. Anna is known as a "savior sibling" because she was conceived to be a donor for Kate.
The story begins when Anna decides to sue her parents. She wants to have control over her own medical decisions. This happens when she learns she is expected to donate a kidney to Kate. The book is told from the point of view of several main characters. In 2008, My Sister's Keeper was made into a movie.
Understanding the Story
Kate's Illness and Anna's Role
Anna Fitzgerald's older sister, Kate, has a serious type of leukemia. This is a cancer of the blood. When Kate was first diagnosed, her parents needed to find a way to help her. No one in the family was a perfect match to donate what Kate needed.
So, Anna's parents decided to have another child, Anna. They used special medical procedures to make sure Anna would be a good match for Kate. When Anna was born, her umbilical cord blood was used to treat Kate. This helped Kate for a while.
However, Kate's illness kept coming back. She would get better, then get sick again. Because of this, Anna often had to donate different things from her body. These donations were used to help Kate stay alive and fight her cancer.
