Ellis Doesn't Need A Bandage

Drs Jacqueline Pflaum-Carlson (JP-C) and Jayna Gardner-Gray (JG-G) recently published a children’s book entitled “Ellis doesn’t need a Bandage.” Both these triple-boarded (HFH EM-IM-Critical Care ’16) have young children. JP-C has twin girls aged 6 years named Casey and Kaitlin. JG-G has three children- Cohen age 6, Ellis age 5, and Hendrik age 2. I sat down with these distinguished authors to learn more about the book and its origin.

The main characters in the book are Jayna’s children, Ellis and Cohen. Ellis scrapes her knee while playing with her brother and calls on her physician-mother to tend to her wound. Ellis pleads for a bandage but her mom instead explains basic wound healing physiology on a kid-friendly level and everybody lives happily ever after.

GM: Where did this idea for a book came from?

JP-C: The excessive use of band-aids at my house was the stimulus. My kids ask for a band-aid every time you look at them wrong. I really have to give credit to my husband because he was trying to explain to them one time that your blood will clot on its own and something about platelets all hugging together. I thought that it was a cute way to describe clotting. Then I started thinking of how I could make a story and read it to them.

Originally the story was just for our kids. The story was about Cohen and Ellis and my kids could relate to Cohen and Ellis so it was for all of them. I originally was going to do it for Cohen’s birthday.

JG-G: It was around the time where there was a lot of social unrest with the killing George Floyd and Jackie was always asking me questions about how it was affecting my kids. The story came from Jackie’s kids and their band-aid obsession but the idea of incorporating my kids came from our discussions and in particular those regarding the lack of diversity in children’s books.

JP-C: For Ellis and Cohen, there’s not a lot of kids that look like them in children’s books.

JG-G: Then we agreed that if we use my kids, Cohen and Ellis in the book, the twins who are BFF’s with Cohen and Ellis, would have this story too. As a result, the story not only addresses a common kid thing but also address a bigger issue of having more diversity in children’s books.

GM: How long did this project take?

JP-C: It was a solid six months. I wrote the story before the pictures. The pictures were the hard part. Each page was hand-painted. This is the first time I had ever done anything like that, so it took a while. Because each page was individually painted there is some variability- look at Jayna’s arms- she gets buffer as the book progresses.

GM: So you’re a physician and artist? Do you have any formal training?

JP-C: No, nothing past high school art. I painted pictures for my kids’ rooms a few years ago and did drawings for them but not much else until the pandemic. I got more serious about the painting when the pandemic arrived and started doing watercolors.

JG-G: Don’t be so humble She is a bonafide artist. Jackie has come out her shell during the pandemic and art has been a stress release for her. Ever since I have known Jackie she has always been artistic in everything she did.

GM: What part did you play in the book Jayna? Are you an artist too?

JG-G: No, no, no. I am not an artist by any stretch.

JC-P: Jayna’s children are the main characters in the book so she had to be an author. She also helped with the writing of the story when I got stuck. She also fact-checked the story for scientific accuracy.

GM: Are there more books in the future or is this just a “one and done?”

JC-P: I actually have three more books written and rhymed but I haven’t painted the pictures. The books are relatively easy to write, it’s the illustrating that’s the hard part. One is about Uncle Matt, the dentist (JG-G’s husband) and is called Cohen’s Cavity. Another is Casey’s Cast where she breaks her arm and goes to the ER. The other was Kaitlin’s Cold but I don’t think we’re going to do that one with the ongoing Covid pandemic. It’s a lot of time and effort so we’ll see what happens.

GM: Tell me more about your art.

JC-P: The painting really helped me deal with the pandemic I started painting anatomy-themed pictures and posting them on Instagram (@critically_craftingMD) Several of these have been sold and I’ve even had a few commissions. I am actually going to be doing a mural on a wall in the HFH ER.

GM: We’ll have more on that in a future newsletter. How many books have you sold?

JP-C: We’ve sold about 360 copies. We self-published through BookBaby which is Amazon’s company and we really haven’t made any money. It’s expensive to publish a book and we only make $1 per book on sales through Amazon. We’re donating a portion of the proceeds to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and they’ve gotten about $5 so far.

GM: Thanks for speaking with me today and I look forward to hearing about future projects and I look forward to the creation of the mural in the ER.

Editors note: If you’d like to buy a copy of this book. Here is the link to the BookBaby website to purchase it.