Little for the last 27 years of her life, recalled that when the two were children, Jean would pull her to the Guelph public library on a sled in winter, having borrowed the library cards of all her siblings so that she could take out more books than her own library card would allow: “She took out 10 books at a time and my job was to keep them dry on the sled on the way home.” Her younger sister, Patricia de Vries, former head nurse at Vancouver General Hospital, who lived with Ms. Reading the classics of juvenile literature educated her imagination and fortified her against schoolyard bullies who taunted her for being clumsy and cross-eyed. To make out the words, she was obliged to hold a book so close to her face that she had to wash the printer’s ink off her nose before she could go out. But first she became an avid reader from an early age.
An elementary school bears her name in Guelph, Ont., where she lived.īorn with scarred corneas that made seeing a constant struggle, the author overcame seemingly insuperable challenges to make her living as a writer. Her books brought her an Order of Canada, four honorary degrees and every major Canadian literary prize for juvenile literature. Young disabled characters figured in many of her stories, which were translated into French, German, Danish, Dutch, Japanese, Greek, Welsh and Norwegian. Out of the evergreen memories of her childhood, Jean Little constructed a body of literary work – some 60 books – that entertained, touched and comforted children with disabilities and those without. She never forgot what it was like to be a child: uncertain, powerless, dreamy, vulnerable.
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