If she'd known then what she knows now...
Little did Kristi Birch know, when she was a copyeditor for
Cancer Research in the early 1990s, the impact that
genetic research would have on cancer treatment a decade
later. "It was mostly proofreading, and back then all I
knew was whether to italicize 'p53 gene,'" says Birch,
today a staff writer at the
Bloomberg School of Public
Health. Birch's story (
"Detecting a Cure") took her into the labs of Hopkins
Medicine's top oncologists. "You could hear in their voices
how excited they are about the work they're doing and how
it can make a difference in a real person's life," Birch
says. "Talk about cheating death!"
Fun with zucchini
Parents of small children may well recognize the work of
cover artist Dan Yaccarino: He's written and illustrated
more than 30 award-winning children's books (including
Good Night, Mr. Night, the Blast Off Boy, and
the Blorp series) and is the creator of the popular
animated television series Oswald, which appears on
Nickelodeon. His commercial illustrations have appeared in
The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Time
magazine. Yaccarino says he had a blast picking projects to
illustrate from among our A to Z guide of volunteer efforts
at Hopkins ( "V is for
Volunteering"). "I chose my favorites — the ones
that seemed like the most fun," says the father of two, who
works in a studio high above the Hudson River, surrounded
by vintage toys and books. — SD