Stars Come Out Within by Jean Little5/21/2023 ![]() ‘As a child,’ she said, ‘I always went around with a black smudge on my nose from the ink, from holding the book so close.’ She never forgot that in the books she loved to read, ‘There were cross-eyed clowns, and once in a while cross-eyed villains, but never ever was there a heroine with strabismus. When she was seven, Little’s family moved to Canada, to the small town of Guelph, where she lived for the rest of her long life. Little had been born blind in Taiwan, in 1932. ![]() I found Brian, who began to feel his own hand, ‘checking to see if it felt like Drem’s.’ I found the teacher who wrote of the class, ‘My kids had far more in common with him than they did with Mary Poppins.’ I found six year old Paddy, who sat up straight, eyes wide after hearing Sutcliff’s description of Drem’s arm read aloud. The book is set in the Bronze Age, and follows a boy named Drem, who only has the use of one arm. (Sutcliff was a pioneer, and her disabled characters are alas too numerous to list here). I found a teacher reading Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1958 novel, Warrior Scarlet. ![]() I found a classroom in the early 1960s, in the Rotary Crippled Children’s centre in Toronto. ![]()
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