Expository Essay on the Life Essay

Jean Little was born in Taiwan in 1932 but grew up in Ontario, Canada. She was born with a serious eye disease and her vision is severely impaired. Though she has overcome this handicap and become a successful children’s author, it is clear that as a child, she must have suffered ridicule and mockery from other children in school and other places. She was different. Many times, children with disabilities are more sensitive than normal kids. They quickly learn that they’re different. They learn firsthand how cruel their peers can be if they look or act differently. They spend uneasy nights crying themselves to sleep. The things that happen to us during those young years we spend in grade school often affect how we live our lives and what type of people we become. Everyone can recall a memory from their childhood, a moment when they were chosen for a sport or not chosen. A moment when they were honored for some accomplishment or laughed at for some misspoken word. Committing some sin such as passing gas while giving a book report in front of the class can scar a child for life. These are the types of incidents that can turn an 8-year old boy into an extreme introvert. Or the class clown, depending upon how the child chooses to deal with the mishap. I believe that this author plays out her painful childhood on the pages of these children’s novels, but unlike her real life, always with a happy ending. In her stories, the children and the adults are kind and understanding. They’re compassionate folks who care and want to help. This is of course a stark contrast to what life is really like in the twenty-first century. Jean Little also develops stories that contain strong bonds between animals and humans, leading one to think that she may have turned away from friendships with other kids her age and instead chosen relationships with animals. Animals are non-judgmental. One thing about your dog: he’ll always love you no matter what you look like. Your cat doesn’t care if you’ve got a funny looking nose or acne. Many lonely people find lifelong friendships with a parrot. Our pets give us unconditional love, something you rarely see from humans even under the best circumstances. Jean Little’s parents were both doctors and probably made every effort to make sure that their daughter grew up as normally as possible. Having doctors as parents certainly afforded her all the best medical attention. But there’s no medicine for an injured self-image. In her books, Jean also explores strong family relationships. The homes and families in her books are happy and well-rounded, which leads one to think that her parents might have over-protected her. Perhaps they knew of the cruelty of grade-school children and wanted to build a wall around their daughter to keep her from harm. That would be a normal reaction for parents of a handicapped child. A handicapped child still sees the mockery from other students. They still hear the snickering and laughter. They hide these violations in their hearts and silently suffer. Often, the wounds are deep and the scars don’t heal. In our society, especially in recent years, children who have suffered such abuse from their peers have gone on to formulate well-thought-out plans for revenge, as in the Littleton, Colorado school shootings. They’ve bought guns and special clothing in their crusade against the cruelty of fellow classmates. {http://www. cnn. com/SPECIALS/2000/columbine. cd/frameset. exclude. html} So many times, these situations have gone unnoticed until it was too late. In recent years, the lives of teachers and students have been needlessly lost because adults have failed to realize how important, how critical it is for children to feel as if they fit in. Jean Little has taken her hurt and humiliation and turned it into uplifting literature for children. Though she too suffered verbal abuse and rejection because she was â€Å"different†, she takes her painful childhood and uses it to build great literature for kids. In her book, â€Å"Somebody Else’s Summer†, two 11 year-old girls find themselves being sent off for a long summer vacation in places where they don’t want to be. Samantha is an athletic girl, being sent to stay with her grandmother’s friend who runs a book store. She dreads going and daydreams of how boring it will be to be stuck all summer with a bunch of dusty old books. Alex is a quiet girl who loves to read. She’s is being sent to a horse farm for the summer. She is horrified to think of interacting with livestock, of getting dirty and sweaty. There will be bugs and spiders and she’s scared of what else might be found on a horse farm. These two children meet on an Air Canada flight and quickly become friends. As they talk, one of them comes up with a crazy idea. What if they traded places? I believe the author sees herself as both of these characters: a quiet girl who loves to stay indoors with her pets and her parents. But also, if only in her 11-year old imagination, this author sees herself as an outdoor type, able to hike through the woods, ride horses, and do all the other things that a normal child might do. Activities that Jean Little was never able to enjoy because of her blindness. In â€Å"Somebody Else’s Summer† Jean Little explores the idea of trading places. As a little girl, she may have daydreamed of becoming someone else, someone with healthy, normal eyes. Someone who could do all the things the other kids could do. If you read this book without knowing anything about this author, you think of it as a delightful children’s story†¦maybe something along the lines of â€Å"The Parent Trap†, an amusing tale of two kids having a summer they will never forget. There’s fun and frivolity as the girls set about taking up each other’s identity. Can they pull it off? Or will they be caught and punished? This is a charming story that any ten or twelve year old girl would enjoy reading. But if you read Jean Little’s biography, you quickly realize that she builds the story around her own reality and the life that she always dreamed of having. She is both characters and the story allows her the opportunity to explore the life she could never have. Of course she enjoyed the life she had with her parents growing up. She loved them. She loved her books and her pets. But she has spent her life having to say no to rock climbing, sky diving, canoeing, field trips†¦fun adventures that most of us take for granted. Still she dreams. She dreams of being someone else. Many handicapped children dream of being someone else. Someone healthy. They dream of going on all the adventures so-called â€Å"normal† children can go on. All kids want to be liked. They want to be popular. They need to be included. Handicapped children are no different. They have the same hopes and dreams that any other child has. It’s very important that they feel like part of the group. {http://www. hcaserves. com} When you read â€Å"Somebody Else’s Summer† knowing something about the author herself, you’re thankful that she was able to find a creative outlet for the cruel mockery she must have endured as a blind child. If she had not had the loving support of concerned parents, if she had not had a dog who loved her no matter what, her talent as a children’s author might never have developed and come to the surface. As compassionate human beings, we all love to see someone turn adversity into opportunity. We love seeing the underdog triumph. It gives us a wonderful feeling in our hearts. It reinforces what it is to be human in each of us when we see someone overcome difficulty or hardship to make something of themselves. In Jean Little’s literature and in her life, we see a woman of courage who has achieved success in spite of her physical†¦and emotional, hardships. Jean takes the lemons that life has dealt her and makes a very fine†¦and successful, lemonade stand. In her stories we can look at the world thru the eyes of an 11 year-old. We can see a hopeful future. She reminds us to focus on the positive things in this life. For a few moments, we are taken away from the cruelty of reality and transported to her world: a world where people accept you for who you are, a world where your physical appearance doesn’t matter. In her world, strangers are kind and helpful and the problems of life amount to no more than what we will have for lunch. Or what game we shall play next. Works Cited CNN Website. May 1999 http://www.hcaserves.com