Sue Barton, Senior Nurse - Helen Dore Boylston

Title: Sue Barton, Senior Nurse Author: Helen Dore Boylston Genre: Classics, YA Rating: 4/5 # pages: 143 Date read: February 2005, January 2008, April 2017

This book covers Sue Barton's final year in nursing school. During this time, Sue trains in the operating room, works in a maternity hospital, and serves as a student head nurse. She is devoted to learning her career, but when young Dr. Bill Barry asks her to marry him, she faces a conflict. She wants to say yes, but she also wants to work as a nurse first.


A short enough book to read in one sitting :) It's not as good as the first one, as there are fewer hospital anecdotes in this one, and some of the anecdotes are somewhat exaggerated - Sue is an angel, Sue saves the day, Sue never does anything wrong, Sue is a Mary-Sue ;)

I still like it in spite of its flaws though :)

Sue Barton, Visiting Nurse - Helen Dore Boylston

Title: Sue Barton, Visiting Nurse Author: Helen Dore Boylston Genre: Classics, YA Rating: 4/5 # pages: 110 Date read: February 2005, January 2008, May 2017

Sue and her best friend, Kit, move to New York city; and join the Visiting Nurse service. Sue's duties take her from the Lower East Side to Harlem. There are many vignettes, humorous and touching. Not all Sue's duties are medical. She helps a lonely Polish new mother find neighborhood friends; and she helps a kind old woman realize her dreams of travel, (Sue secretly donates the money she had saved for her own trousseau for the trip). This leads into a surprising reward for Sue herself.


This used to be my favourite of the series, but I've had to downgrade the rating somewhat. I still absolutely I love reading about Sue's work in the streets of New York and how she has to be imaginative and think up solutions to problems she'd never have met at the hospital, but the older I get, the more the disagreement between her and Bill annoys me. I am completely on Sue's side and found Bill totally unreasonable, which made the end somewhat less than satisfying... especially as it's rather clear that the author is on Bill's side. A sign of the times, I guess, but annoyed me regardless.