Changes

|title=Little People

|author=Jane Sullivan

|publisher=Allen & Unwin

|date=June 2012

|website=http://janesullivan.com.au/

|video=sb5atjYrCXg

|summary=This is a deceptive novel starting as a fictionalised history, shifting gear into a mystery and finishing as a full-steamed adventure. It revels in a time when science defied logic and the only sustainable lifestyle for the physically different was to be gawped at by the paying public. Fascinating and just a little bit different from your usual tale of everyday Victorian folk.

}}

Unemployed governess Mary Ann rescues what seems to be a child from the currents of the Yarra River in Australia. However, the 'child' turns out to be none other than Charles Stratton, aka General Tom Thumb, 'midget' and star of PT Barnum's touring 'Lilliputian' show. As a token of gratitude for her act of heroism the troupe's tour manager, Sylvester Bleeker, offers Mary Ann work and a solution to her dilemma. For she is not only out of work and alone... and pregnant. She's made to feel welcome and a sense of belonging at last although all isn't what it seems. She may well be everything that Tom Thumb and his wife Lavinia have been looking for but that may not be a good thing. Even the title itself isn't all it seems and has an additional meaning, not just a reference to the small of stature. Mary Ann gradually realises that, as a lone single parent, she would be destitute (and everything that meant at that time) without the troupe. She too is a little person, but of no account rather than reduced height.