Little by Little: A Writer's Education

Adиle Ashby, a library consultant, is the former editor of Canadian Materials for Schools and Libraries.

At first glance, the title of Jean Little’s memoir appears to be a play upon her name. It is that, of course, but it soon becomes clear upon reading the book that it is much more. The phrase “little by little” seems to encapsulate the way Jean sees her life: as a series of often painful but ultimately educational developmental episodes that culminated in her success as a writer. The episodes are sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and always revealing. She begins her own story with one that happened in Taiwan where she spent her early childhood as one of four children of a pair of Canadian doctors. Another child tells her she cannot climb a tree because her eyes are “bad.” Jean understands for the first time that she has been set apart because of her sight problems, but she, with the support of her mother, climbs the tree anyway, right to the top. Back in Toronto, she is enrolled in sight-saving class, and then when the family moves to Guelph, she begins to attend regular school. A reader from a very early age, she discovers the joys of the public library. Overcoming the doubts of many of the people around her, supported by her family, she finishes a degree in English, despite the death of her beloved father while she is away in residence. She had her first poems published in Saturday Night at age 17. She encountered B.K. Sandwell, E.J. Pratt, Northrop Frye, and Jack MeClelland, who rejected her first novel and later wrote the letter that informed her she had won the Little, Brown Canadian Children’s Book Award for Mine for keeps, which she wrote while teaching handicapped children because she felt they ought to be able to read about children like themselves. Little By Little is filled with episodes that provide Little’s fans with clues to the genesis of her books, and like them, it is a moving, illuminating experience.