Writing Let's Go, Darby

I’m repeatedly asked, “Why did you write Let’s Go, Darby!? Why a book about children in a hospital? Did anything specific inspire you?

Surprisingly, I had to dig deep to answer. I’ve been working on the book for years and couldn’t remember exactly when and how it all started.

But I eventually did. It’s a little roundabout, but…

I live on Toronto Island, in a community of 700 people in the 858-acre Toronto Island Park, a 12-minute ferry ride from downtown Toronto. The Island has had a rich history dating back to the early 1800s, along with some grand Victorian architecture. Unfortunately, those building have all been torn down, including the Lakeside Home for Little Children, the once summer home for patients at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (the hospital that is now referred to as SickKids). I frequently walk along a beach, past the former site of the Lakeside Home and was always curious about what it was like for children to spend their summer there.

The more I read about the Home and SickKids Hospital, the more fascinated I became with the lives of children who lived there in years past. It eventually led me to a book on the history of SickKids’ where I stumbled across the story of Georgie Titus, one of the hospital’s first patients. Georgie’s trip in 1898 to the hospital, on his own, by dogsled, from his hometown 40 miles away was SO amazing, I had to wrote about it. And that’s the genesis of Let’s Go, Darby!

Writing the book appealed to me in another way. I have a son with a disability, and over the years had become all too aware how children who were sick or had disabilities were either sidelined or absent altogether from children’s literature. I wanted to change that.

Writing the book didn’t come easy. I couldn’t write a non-fiction book about Georgie because I didn’t have much to go on other than the basic outline of his journey to the hospital, and minimal information about his treatment. 

I’ve always been a writer, but I’ve never written fiction before. So I had to use my imagination to create characters. Events, dialogue, and still stay true to the history of the time. It was a challenge. And took me a long time.

If you’re interested in learning how I turned the few facts I had into a whole book of historical fiction, I'll soon post how I did it. Hint: it took a lot of research.

The quote below is from the medical practitioner whose method for treating clubfoot is practiced around the world today. Georgie had clubfoot. Treatment is usually started in infancy, so Georgie's case was unusual, and more difficult to correct since he was 10 years old when he came to SickKids in 1898.