Small Ship, Great Sea: The Life Story of a Mongoloid Boy

From the cover: “Many parents, nurses, doctors and social workers are painfully aware of the problems which beset the care of mongol children. For some, the answers are found in an atmosphere of family life, for others the only fair and effective solution is found in the skilled supervision of institutions for the mentally handicapped.

Many factors influence the choice of upbringing — parental circumstances, the effects on young brothers and sisters, the degree of subnormality and so on.

Jan Maarten, the boy whose life history is recounted here, was perhaps unusually fortunate in his domestic and social circumstances. His parents were intelligent, sophisticated, resourceful and people of means. Almost from the beginning, they determined to ensure that their eldest child should lack for nothing which devotion, skilled medical attention and patient teaching could provide. At the same time, they were fully aware that what was possible for them and their son would not have been possible for other parents of mongol children.

The results of this choice are told here, forthrightly and without false sentiment, with a view to helping all those within whose care are such children as Jan Maarten.”