The Natural Resources officer praises Jacob for having done the best Job of all the co-operators, and Jacob is ready to face friend Amos and school with renewed confidence. Barbara Smucker gives us a bird's eye view of life in rural Ontario among the Mennonite farmers. Middle grade readers are eager to experience unfamiliar places and cultures. They love stories that show young people competently contributing to a better world. Jacob's Little Giant fulfils these criteria and gives us an appealing character in young Jacob.
Time travel is a common device in children's literature.
Two books that successfully integrate this device are Cora Taylor's The Doll and Kit Pearson's A Handful of Time . In both stories, the characters travel into the past and the experience helps them deal with the emotional strain of an impending family break-up. In Cora Taylor's story, invalid Meg is taken to her grandmother's house to recover from rheumatic fever while her parents decide how best to arrange her life now that thy are divorcing. Meg fears the impending family crisis, but as her parents have not included her in their decision, she is still able to deny the awful truth. Through Jessie's intervention, Meg slips backwards in dreams to become Morag, a pioneer child whose family is travelling by horsedrawn wagon across the prairies to Fort Carleton.