When Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Scale was administered to 26 healthy and 26 chronically ill children, it was found that the chronically ill were significantly more anxious than the healthy. Results also suggested that the question of sex differences in children's emotional response to illness deserves further investigation in studies involving large samples of subjects at several developmental levels and focusing on the identification of mediating variables. For one such variable (capacity for fantasy) health status differences but no sex differences were found. An exploratory study of another potentially important mediating variable compared conceptions of the body and illness among hospitalized and healthy children. When data obtained in a body drawing task were inspected for number of body systems or parts acknowledged, no sex differences were found. However, prepubescent and pubescent girls participating in the study did not generally acknowledge in their drawings the existence of a human reproductive system. That almost none of the girls studied displayed any knowledge of human reproductive systems was a finding also thought deserving of further study. (RH)