When Vivien Thomas was a young boy, his dream was to enter the medical field. Tiny Stitches is an excellent picture book for older readers about this fascinating life-saving pioneer in heart surgery. Despite persistent racial prejudice, Thomas devised a means to perform open-heart surgery on 'blue babies' who were not getting enough oxygen, a procedure that would save the lives of many infants.Īll in all, Tiny Stitches: The Life of Medical Pioneer Vivien Thomas is a rousing tribute to a man unjustly forgotten. As an African-American, Thomas' title was officially janitor. Vivien Thomas had long strived to become a doctor, but after losing his college savings in the stock market crash of 1929, he instead took a job as a research technician at Vanderbilt University. The premise of the book is rather straightforward.

Bootman's subdued watercolors channel the sobering climate of Depression-era America in a sensitive portrayal of a little-recognized medical pioneer. Backmatter includes notes, glossary, and references. Blalock, the doctor who originally hired him, on performing the first surgery. Hooks writes with vivid detail and immediacy, describing Thomas's anxiety as he coaches Dr. Hooks' text is rather simplistic, straightforward, and informative. He was the assistant to surgeon Alfred Blalock in Blalock's experimental animal laboratory at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and later at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Vivien Theodore Thomas was an American laboratory supervisor who developed a procedure used to treat blue baby syndrome, now known as cyanotic heart disease, in the 1940s. It illuminates the trials and triumphs of Vivien Thomas and his vital role in the development of children's open-heart surgery. Tiny Stitches: The Life of Medical Pioneer Vivien Thomas is a children's picture book written by Gwendolyn Hooks and illustrated by Colin Bootman. Tiny Stitches is the compelling story of this incredible pioneer in medicine.

Overcoming racism and resistance from his colleagues, Vivien ushered in a new era of medicine children's heart surgery. Vivien's name did not appear in the report. Taussig announced their innovative new surgical technique, the Blalock-Taussig shunt. After months of experimenting, Vivien developed a procedure that was used for the first successful open-heart surgery on a child. Helen Taussig find a cure for children with a specific heart defect. Blalock's research assistant, Vivien learned surgical techniques. Vivien knew that the all-white school would never admit him as a student, but he hoped working there meant he was getting closer to his dream.Īs Dr. Then he heard about a job opening at the Vanderbilt University medical school under the supervision of Dr. But after the stock market crashed in 1929, Vivien lost all his savings. Vivien Thomas's greatest dream was to attend college to study medicine.

Tiny Stitches by Gwendolyn Hooks