When asked to tell his life story, Meindert DeJong wrestled to find something interesting enough to record. To most of us, the events of his life are far from ordinary. He basically described his life as divided between the writing part and the non-writing part. I contend that the non-writing part made the writing part remarkable. His simple storytelling is powerful in its simplicity and there is nothing dull or unremarkable about the stories he crafted.

Actually, his first story was produced as a desperate attempt to keep his family from starving. It is another example of how adversity produces good things. Let me tell you a little about his life, and you tell me if you think it was unremarkable.

The North Atlantic is famous for its tempetuosity. During one of its furious storms, on a cold dark night in 1906, in the village of Wierum, Friesland, Netherlands, a weak little baby boy was born. He had pneumonia three times in the next few years and his entire community prayed for his survival. His father, a successful architect, made the decision to emigrate to Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I to protect the family, especially his older brothers from service in the army. It was a good thing they were staunch Calvinists grounded in their faith, because that move was a battle for the family. Not speaking a word of English, in an unwelcoming community, his brothers and he were forced to begin school at the beginning grades though they had been well educated in Holland. Eventually his older brothers had to leave school to help support the family. His mother gave birth to a little boy who died. The family sacrificed to keep Meindert in school and send him to Calvin College from which he graduated just as the Great Depression began.

Meindert found himself in the battle to find a job along with the rest. Working at tinning, grave digging, and whatever he could find to do, he ended up at a small college in Iowa where the pay was in scrip, resulting in his early retirement from teaching and an effort at poultry farming. That was dismally unsuccessful also. At this critical point (you know I love this part) the heroine enters, and yes, it is a librarian.

“I was starving on that depression farm,” he relates, “There were no jobs to be had for love or money – there was no money.” Because his local librarian was highly entertained by his anecdotes about his pet goose, she suggested he write a children’s story. He had tried his luck at submitting short stories to magazines before, but they were all going out of business during those lean years. With nothing to lose, he wrote The Big Goose and the Little White Duck describing his own pet goose’s “interesting personality, high intelligence, and ornery temperament.” It was immediately accepted by Harper Brothers. Here’s his modest response to this early success: