A Story With No End

art by Sarah S. Brannen

          Visit Alyson Beecher on Wednesdays for Non-Fiction Picture Books at Kidlit Frenzy.  From her and others, you will discover and want to celebrate terrific nonfiction picture books!

       Barry Wittenstein clearly has a great sense of humor, because during the telling of this interesting story, he's made me laugh quite a lot. Certainly, I did not laugh when he began after Earle Dickson married his sweetheart, Josephine, and discovered that she had lots of small accidents, like tiny cuts when preparing dinner. And sad to say, all she had to stop the bleeding was a kitchen rag. Barry's father was a doctor so he knew all about infections, and Barry worked for a company that made hospital supplies. You could say he knew a thing or two. He devised a long strip of tape with some gauze every so often. Josephine loved it, just needed to cut off a strip to wrap her finger. It was an invention full of love, but that long strip became a problem!

     Wittenstein might have ended the story then, but no, more than once he "almost" wrote, "The End", yet he knew more he wanted to tell! This new "bandage" that helped with "first aid" was eventually named "Band-Aid". That long, long strip was labor intensive to produce, a shorter one was invented, and the rest was almost history. But not yet. That's where the humor continues. Now they had to figure out how to produce them faster. Then, there was a bigger problem, no one would buy them! Digging deeper, the author has created a story that really has no end. After the Dicksons passed away in this 21st century, companies have created all kinds of shapes, sizes, and colors. Also, now they can be found 'latex-free'. This story has not ended yet.

      I don't want to give it all away. It's a great story, shown in delightful, full-of-expression illustrations by Chris Hsu, in his first picture book. One must look carefully and one can spot more than one person in the illustrations who is in need, of a BANDAID! (See pics below.) He even put bandaids, lots of them, on the end papers! There is more to the story than I've shared, and Barry Wittenstein has also added an author's note, a timeline of Earle Dickson's invention, plus a timeline of other medical inventions from the 1920s and 1930s with the questions: "What can you find out about how these came to be?" Terrific book!

Everybody needs a Band-aid, sometime!