Kelly Gets a Vaccine...How we Beat Coronavirus

Kelly Gets a Vaccine, How We Beat Coronovirus

Kelly Gets a Vaccine written by Lauren and Adam Block and illustrated by Debbie Rahmalia is the third book in their Kelly series. To learn more about Lauren and Adam Block, listen to our podcast here!

Their third book, Kelly Gets a Vaccine takes the reader through the final journey of getting the vaccine. Although the COVID-19 vaccine is not available to children yet under 16 (or 18 depending on the vaccine), I think it’s important to begin discussing the topic with your children. Children are curious and ask many questions! After reading this book with your child, many of the questions they might ask can be answered.

The story begins with a conversation between Kelly and her younger brother Joey, who is worried about getting the vaccine that day at the doctor’s office. Throughout the book, Kelly asks questions about the vaccine, how it works and what to expect after getting the shot. The authors do an excellent job of explaining a complex topic in a way that children can understand, which is key.

The book also discusses vaccines in general and how they work. When reading this book with my son, he learned so much and got many of his questions answered such as “When will I get my vaccine?” “How do vaccines work?”, “Why is is taking so long to get the vaccines for everyone?”, etc. I also love the vocabulary opportunities when reading this book such as the term “herd immunity” and “immune responses”.

This book is also free for download! To download the book, click here!

To learn more about the book, visit KellyGetsaVaccine.com.

Interview with Lauren and Adam Block

Lauren Block MD MPH is a primary care physician, Associate Professor at Zucker School of Medicine, and mom of three. She graduated from Yale College, Harvard Medical School, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Adam E. Block PhD is a health economist, Assistant Professor of Public Health at New York Medical College, and father of three. He received his PhD from Harvard and worked in Washington, DC helping to draft and implement the Affordable Care Act.

Can you tell me about your book, Kelly Gets a Vaccine?

Kelly Gets A Vaccine: How We Beat Coronavirus is about the next step in the battle against the pandemic. Science has discovered, not one but multiple vaccines to trigger an immune response so the body can be prepared to fight coronavirus and win if it ever encounters the virus. This will then result in fewer people having the virus, fewer transmitting it to each other and the virus slowly will exit the community, which is something called herd immunity. These are all complex steps and they take time and we wanted to explain them to children.

Is this the last book in your series?

We have seen such an amazing response to the Kelly books, books written about science at an elementary level that we are trying to be responsive as the science changes. When we wrote Kelly Stays Home: The Science of Coronavirus we did not write it intending to write Kelly Goes Back to School: More Science on Coronavirus but after 4 months, science advanced we learned more and while the lessons of the first book were still relevant, people we moving to the next step and we wanted a book to discuss that, since we were moving forward, but we weren’t moving back to normal. Same for this most recent book especially in light of some of the anti-science information that is out there, we wanted to give teachers and parents a science based resource to simply explain how vaccines work, and how this vaccine works, and why it is the best tool we have to get back to school, work, travel and seeing our grandparents like we used to do.

What should we tell our children when they ask when they will be getting the vaccine (since it’s not available to children yet)?

First, we tell our children that there is not enough for everyone just yet, but there will be soon. Therefore it is getting distributed to those who need it most. While many children have had coronavirus, they generally get well pretty quickly while their grandparents very well could die from it. So it is going to the grandparents first. Just like when the polio vaccine came out 70 years ago, it was given to kids first because kids got the sickest. And, epidemiology is all about lowering “total risk” so if someone in your household gets the vaccine YOUR likelihood of getting coronavirus is lower. So when Lauren got her first dose on December 19th, we had a family celebration. She was exposed to coronavirus as a physician regularly and now she was safer, so we all are safer.

What would you like children to learn from your book?

We want them to learn:

1) How vaccines work: they put a piece of the virus coating, but not the virus itself into the body, so the body can recognize it and prepare an immune response if the virus ever comes

2) Vaccines do not prevent disease, vaccinations do. We all need to get it, even if we are afraid of shots. Because there are lots of people who are “immunocompromised” who cannot get it, so they depend on us to get the shots when we can to promote herd immunity.

3) We can’t just throw out our masks the second we get the vaccine. There is still some risk given the prevalence in the community. Vaccines paired with social distancing get us closer to getting back to more normal social interactions. We can see the finish line!