GENRE: *STEM/STEAM, NF, Biography
WORDS: 1045
Query:
Dear PBParty Agents and Editors,
A Work of Heart is about Maly and Jack Gibbon, the bold scientists who made modern heart surgery possible, and Cecelia Bavolek, the brave young girl who was the first to survive surgery while connected to the heart and lung machine they invented.
This narrative nonfiction story invites readers ages 6-10 to consider science and serendipity through glimpses of Cecelia, Maly and Jack as children, and then, as their lives intersect when Maly, a researcher, and Jack, a surgeon, meet in a research lab and devote the next two decades to inventing the machine that eventually saves Cecelia’s life.
A Work of Heart combines the simple science in Rajani LaRocca’s Your One and Only Heart with the contemporary storytelling about under-recognized medical heroes in Danna Zeiger’s Rewriting the Rules: How Dr. Kathleen Friel Created New Possibilities for Brain Research and Disability and Lisa Katzenberger’s It Belongs to the World: Frederick Banting and the Invention of Insulin.
My research for A Work of Heart included an interview with Maly and Jack’s only living child, Alice, age 89, and visits to the National Archives of Medicine, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and to Maly’s family home, where I was able to review her diaries, photo albums and correspondence.
My first book, A Sukkah for Bella, was released with Lovevery Books in 2025, and a second title, Sharing the Light, releases this fall. My work for adults has been published in The New York Times, CNN and Huffington Post. I serve on the selection committee for the Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children’s Literature at UCONN and on my local library foundation board.
Thank you for considering my work.
Excerpt:
Billions of heartbeats ago,
Cecelia was born with a hole in her heart,
a problem doctors didn’t know how to fix.
“Ceely” hardly felt sick as a child.
She played with her six big brothers and sisters.
She dreamed of becoming a teacher.
But as she grew, her heart grew weaker.
Soon she could hardly climb the stairs at school.
Every breath felt tight.
Every heartbeat hurt.
Ceely knew she needed help.
What inspired you to write this story & what do you have in common with it:
In 2023, I sat in a hospital waiting room wondering who invented this machine that was beating for my mother’s heart and breathing for her lungs. I loved learning about Maly and Jack, partners in the lab and in life, who had the audacity to envision and then accomplish what was long considered impossible: making heart surgery possible by inventing a machine that could take over the functions of the heart and lung outside the body. By sharing how their lives ultimately intersected with Cecelia’s, the brave young girl who went first, I hope to inspire a new generation of curious, creative scientists.
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