My Friend, Miss Dorothy Jane
My Friend, Miss Dorothy Jane When I was very young, there were no children’s programs like Mr. Rogers’ Neighbourhood, Captain Kangaroo or the Muppets . Yes, television had been invented, but it didn’t exist for me. We lived on a Northeastern Ontario backwoods farm in a house where light was furnished by coal-oil lamps and later, a gas lantern. The power came later, when I was of school age. We had books, and radio, though. My mother read to me and my sister every night and eventually I learned to decipher those little black marks on the page for myself. One of my favourite stories was “Thumbelina,” about a child so tiny her mother used a walnut shell as her cradle. Stolen by a toad, who wants her as her son’s bride, Thumbelina escapes, and is befriended by a fish, a butterfly, a mouse and a swallow. In the end, the swallow saves her from marriage to a mole by flying her off to a faraway land where she meets a prince just her siz...