Review by Susan Kay Phillips
This month’s newsletter reviews the inspiring children’s picture book, Thank You, Dr. Salk! The Scientist Who Beat Polio and Healed the World, written by Dean Robbins and illustrated by Mike Dutton.
Dean Robbins uses a simple, engaging text style to beautifully unfold the story of Jonas Salk, who grew up in New York City during the time when polio epidemics would sweep across the United States.
Young Jonas noticed many people on the streets of New York who were crippled by polio. He wanted to help, inspired by a concept from his Jewish faith, tikkum olam, which when translated means “to heal the world”. Tikkum olam became Jonas’s dream.
Robbins skillfully highlights that although Jonas was a quiet and studious boy, he knew “a different way to be brave”. His bravery manifested in his determination to stop polio. Jonas studied hard and became a physician and then a medical researcher. In 1947, Jonas was ready. He entered his lab and began the hard work of finding a polio vaccine.
People became aware of the work the Jonas was doing. Now they wanted to help. Grown-ups and children sent dimes to the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in what came to be known as the March of Dimes to help fund the research Jonas was doing.
Jonas kept working until felt he had a safe and effective polio vaccine. He tested it publicly on a few brave volunteers, including himself, his wife, and his sons. By 1954, Jonas felt his vaccine was safe. Millions of first, second, and third graders lined up to receive a polio vaccine and become Polio Pioneers. It was the largest clinical trial in history. And it was a success!
Jonas had realized his dream and healed the world of polio. Thousands of letters poured into Jonas’s mailbox thanking him for his work. He even received one letter that was two hundred feet long, signed by every person in a grateful town!
The illustrations by Mike Dutton vibrantly portray Jonas’s painstaking scientific work while conveying throughout the quiet dedication to tikkum olam that supported Jonas through his years of work.
Jonas Salk did not claim the financial rights to his polio vaccine. He said it belonged to everyone and he gave it away freely. Now he could watch the people on the streets of New York City, coming and going in their daily lives, no longer afraid of the crippling disease polio.
Reviewer’s Note
Dr. Jonas Salk (1914-1996) was a physician and a medical researcher who successfully developed a vaccine for polio in 1954. It’s a bit hard now to imagine the fear and panic that gripped the United States each year from 1944 to 1955, although the recent COVID-19 epidemic gives us a perspective.
Polio is a warm weather disease. Almost every summer a wave of polio infection swept across the country. Elementary age children were particularly vulnerable to the virus. There was no protection. Some people became ill with the virus and recovered completely. Others were left with permanent paralysis or died.
The March of Dimes was founded by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938. Roosevelt himself had been diagnosed with polio in 1921 and suffered paralysis in his legs. The term March of Dimes was coined by the much loved comedian Eddie Cantor as a play on the title of a popular newsreel program called the March of Time. Cantor and other famous entertainers used the March of Dimes theme to publicize the idea of children and grown-ups sending a dime to President Roosevelt to fund research on the polio vaccine. On the President’s birthday on January 30, 1938, over thirty-thousand letters arrived at the White House containing a dime or a quarter or perhaps even a dollar.
To build confidence in the safety of the vaccine, Dr. Sauk had publicly vaccinated his three sons. To help encourage teenagers to get vaccinated, Elvis Presley, the King of Rock n’ Roll, joined the vaccine safety campaign and was publicly given the Salk polio vaccine on the Ed Sullivan show.
Backstage at CBS Studio 50, before a 1956 airing of The Ed Sullivan Show, New York City Commissioner of Health Leona Baumgartner, right, holds the arm of Elvis Presley as Assistant Commissioner Harold Fuerst administers the polio vaccine to the king of rock ‘n’ roll.
The American public responded. Millions of people lined up to get vaccinated. Within twenty-five years, wild polio virus was eliminated in the United States. Here is a link to a Youtube of a 1955 video of Dr. Salk announcing the success of the polio vaccine. https://youtu.be/2LlDn_MQDkc
As always, thank you for reading!
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