So much has happened since I first wrote about Jean Little. You know, three children, two books, a few jobs, a few moves, and … a pandemic? And much more importantly, Jean Little’s death in late 2020. My never meeting her is now confirmed, though in some ways I always carry her being within me. Furthermore, the National Library Service acquired many more books from CNIB, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, so I was finally able to read the sequel to From Anna, Listen to the Singing.
From Anna was a wonderful book for me as a child, but since I had read Little by Little first, it felt like revisiting some of Jean Little’s childhood through a slightly different perspective. Listen to the Singing, though it has a few echoes of the autobiography, was utterly different. The only time so far I have encountered Jean Little’s rendering of a post-age thirteen character. There is still quite an innocence to Anna, which hearkens to the setting of the book in 1939 as well as what Jean Little might have felt comfortable writing about. Anna longs to dance with a boy but fully expects to be rejected, and we don’t really know all of the feelings she had about dancing only with a teacher, just as Jean only danced with her brothers and again did not indicate any expectation of connecting with anyone for an encounter, a relationship or a marriage. The Nazis come for Anna’s Aunt Tania for standing up for an older Jewish man and for not deserting him, and what happens to her remains not only implied but also almost unspoken. While this makes sense in the plot, I also imagine the author not feeling quite able to face it more directly.
While some tropes are still very gendered and heteronormative, my only cringing moment was when one friend declared that there would be no foreign languages spoken in the girl gang, and from then on, English and English literature are discussed, though Anna has a few "off-camera" conversations with that same girl about her aunt and her brother’s enlisting. But still, it was so nice to fall into these characters again: to get more nuanced portraits of Rudi, Gretchen, Anna’s parents, and Anna herself, to become more deeply acquainted with Dr. Schumacher and Miss Williams/Mrs. Schumacher, to read about many complex ways people don’t get disability. I’m sure this is another out-of-print gem, but if you can find it, you might enjoy it!
Kristen Witucki 