Thread by @Inadarkwood

You know those books where they're so good you're furious at yourself for not knowing the book before, not reading it sooner? Reading one of those at the mo

And this line! 'All at once, a door slammed. Everyone jumped, but Sal, partly because she'd been lost in a world of her own and partly because of her cerebral palsy, leaped a good two inches higher than everyone else.' There's that startle reflex, being written about in 1962!

I can't imagine how mindblowing it would have been for disabled kids to not only see themselves in a book in 1962, but in the illustrations, too!

ID: An illustration by Lewis Parker, which shows a child called Sally Copeland standing on crutches and looking down at a small dog.

This illustration is from the late Jean Little's first book, Mine for Keeps

And this paragraph! 'Sal could feel her face redden as Elsje's mother looked at her. When you were at home or at school, she thought unhappily, where everyone was used to seeing you, you forgot all about having cerebral palsy.'

(Continued)

'But when you went to strange places and people looked at you the way Mrs. Jansen was looking, with sorry, extra-kind eyes, then you had to remember and feel different.'

The novel is full of these small moments, which a nondisabled author would never be able to grasp.

So I just finished reading Mine for Keeps (spoilers ahead). The novel ends with our disabled protagonist, Sally Copeland, feeling enormous joy.

That may not sound like much, but disabled characters rarely get happy endings in books, even now. The trope that disability is synonymous with misery is still prevalent. And here's this book, all the way from 1962, defiantly asserting the happiness of Sally Copeland.

What struck me while I was reading the book was just how much is left unsaid about Sally, something that a nondisabled author would never have the gumption to do. Sally is never treated, on the page, like a rare species sighting that needs to be explained.

Hell, if I read that kind of respectful treatment of a disabled character in a book that was published yesterday, it would be refreshing. I can't fathom how kids in 1962 would have reacted to it.

Mine for Keeps went on to be a bestseller, and over fifty years after it was first published, it's still in print. The novel began Jean Little's career, which would see her write more than fifty books. Little died at the age of 88 last April. She was working on a third memoir.

Talking about writing Mine for Keeps, Little said 'I decided someone had to write a realistic book. I wanted kids to find children like themselves in the books they read.' Little made sure disabled kids could see themselves in books, and so much more.