“Needles didn’t scare Vivien Thomas. In fact, he designed the ones lying on the operating table in front of him.” Working with Dr. Alfred Blalock of Vanderbilt and then Johns Hopkins University, African American Vivien Thomas was a skilled technician, inventor and teacher who developed medical techniques and the equipment needed to implement them. For decades, he also taught doctors and medical students. And for decades his work went publicly unrecognized. In 1944, when Blalock pioneered surgery to save “blue babies,” he did so using Vivien’s process and equipment, with Vivien talking him through the surgery. But Vivien wasn’t mentioned in the accolades that followed. While racism was a fact of Vivien’s life and career, his self-respect, intelligence, and dignity are the focus of a work that concludes with the much-deserved recognition he received at Johns Hopkins, where his portrait now hangs with those of other distinguished faculty. More about Vivien, tetralogy of Fallot (“blue baby syndrome”), a glossary, and sources are included in this deftly written and illustrated picture-book biography. (Ages 7–10)

NAACP Image Awards Winner - National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

The life story of Vivien Thomas, an African American surgical technician who developed the first procedure used to perform open-heart surgery on children.

Vivien Thomas's greatest dream was to attend college to study medicine. But after the stock market crashed in 1929, Vivien lost all his savings. Then he heard about a job opening at the Vanderbilt University medical school under the supervision of Dr. Alfred Blalock. 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.

As Dr. Blalock's research assistant, Vivien learned surgical techniques. In 1943, Vivien was asked to help Dr. Helen Taussig find a cure for children with a specific heart defect. After months of experimenting, Vivien developed a procedure that was used for the first successful open-heart surgery on a child. Afterward, Dr. Blalock and Dr. Taussig announced their innovative new surgical technique, the Blalock-Taussig shunt. Vivien's name did not appear in the report.

Overcoming racism and resistance from his colleagues, Vivien ushered in a new era of medicine--children's heart surgery. Tiny Stitches is the compelling story of this incredible pioneer in medicine.