"I didn't cry when I got
a bracelet with my name on it.
The fourth time I cried was
when a doctor pressed on my
stomach with her hand and
asked if it hurt.
It did."
As she did so brilliantly in The Airport Book (2016), Lisa Brown now introduces her readers to a hospital visit for the same little girl who played a meaningful role with her family at the airport awaiting their flight. She is older now, and the visit to the hospital is her first. Her stomach pains have brought her there to be checked out. After a thorough examination and a variety of tests, she is diagnosed with appendicitis.
In first person text, she lets readers know that her pain and the trip to the hospital were not made without tears. She explains that she cried nine times, and provides all information for the whens and whys. Her pain is enough to alarm her parents, and to have hospital personnel doing their best work to find out what is causing it, as well as to explain what is happening every step of the way.
Surgery is completed and recovery has begun before she is released to go home with her family. The best part now is that her stomach pain is gone. She can do the rest of her healing in a familiar and comfortable place where the tears are happy ones. That is the narrative part of the story
It is in the amazing watercolor artwork that many other tales are told. Numerous story lines are evident for those who take the time to pay attention and follow one person through the book's pages, before returning to the beginning to watch a different someone. Some will be recognized as having been at the airport. A helpful, caring group of hospital workers do all they can to make the child comfortable and to assuage her understandable fears. There is evident diversity in the people, the families, and the cultures whose stories are told in changing perpectives and scenarios. This may be a common experience for children; Ms. Brown makes it special in every way.
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