From Anna Page 14

  Perhaps because of her own challenges — she was born with scars over both corneas and attended a special sight-saving class because she is legally blind — Jean often writes about the underdog. Her characters often face external challenges, but it is the inner life that she portrays so convincingly. Says Meguido Zola in Language Arts: “Ultimately, that is the real thrust of Jean Little’s novels — recognizing and mastering the enemy within rather than tilting at the one without.”

  The basket that Jean wove in sight-saving class, and which was the inspiration for Anna’s gift in this book, now resides in the Osborne Collection of Children’s Books in Toronto, along with the short version of From Anna that eventually grew into this story. After fifty years of creating books that children and adults love, Jean is still writing, still listening to children to find what engages and disturbs and delights them, and still finding intriguing characters that demand to be let into a book. She lives in Guelph, Ontario.

  Credits

  Cover photo by Kathryn Hollinrake

  Chapters 1, 3 and 13: “Die Gedanken Sind Frei”

  Written by Arthur Kevess

  © 1966 Kohaw Music (ASCAP) / Appleseed Music Inc. (ASCAP)

  Under licence from The Bicycle Music Company.

  All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

  Other books by Jean Little:

  Orphan at My Door

  Brothers Far from Home

  If I Die Before I Wake

  Exiles from the War

  Dancing Through the Snow

  Pippin the Christmas Pig

  Listen, Said the Donkey

  The Sweetest One of All

  Wishes