A Doctor at Heart

The Story of Groundbreaking Scientist

and Teacher Vivien Thomas

A TRUE TALE WITH

A CHERRY ON TOP

Beach Lane Books

(Simon & Schuster)

(pub. 5.12.2026)

48 pages

Ages 4 - 8

Author: Joan Schoettler

   Illustrator: Steffi Walthall

Character: Vivien Thomas

Overview:

" Vivien Thomas always loved solving problems and figuring out how things worked. In high school, inspired by his family physician, he decided he would become a doctor. Despite losing his college savings during the 1930 bank panic, Vivien stayed dedicated to making his dream a reality, a trait that would serve him all his life.

Vivien secured a lab assistant position at Vanderbilt University and later moved to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he and his mentor developed a groundbreaking procedure to cure blue baby syndrome, which led to them performing the first open-heart surgery on a child."

Tantalizing taste:

"Many surgeons learned how to perform the blue baby surgery under Vivien's guiding hands.

One day, Dr. Blalock examined an almost invisible line of stitches.

'Vivien, are you sure you did this?' asked Dr. Blalock.

Vivien nodded.

'This looks like something the Lord made,' said Dr. Blalock.

Yet Vivien's pay stayed low. Though he kept working in the lab, he took other jobs to supplement his income. Sometimes he was a bartender at house parties, where he served the people he worked with during the day at Johns Hopkins.

Meanwhile, Vivien taught many young medical practitioners who would go on to become some of the top cardiac surgeons in the country."

And something more: Joan Schoettler shared in the Author's Note: "After I watched Something the Lord Made, a film about Vivien Thomas (1910-1985), the idea to write a picture book for young readers about this inspiring man took hold. Thomas overcame challenges, disappointments, and racial bias to become a researcher, teacher and medical-device inventor. Along the way, he helped develop modern heart surgery... "

"Thomas's students remembered him saying, 'Everybody's got a job to do. You are put here to do a job one hundred percent, regardless of how much education you have.' Vivien Thomas held those words close throughout this life, and he lived them to the fullest."