Summary: Helen Kellers children's biography outlines ow she overcame her blindness and deafness. She became deaf and blind when she caught an unidentifiable illness as a toddler. Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, helped Helen learn to speak and read and she even graduated from high school and then college. Helen lived a very difficult life and she had many obstacles to overcome but she overcame it all and she lived a life dedicated to helping others.

Personal reaction: I have heard the name Helen Keller before but I never knew anything about her until I read this book. She was such an amazing and inspiring person and I definitely admire her. I think that it is amazing how she was able to help so many people despite her being blind and deaf.

Extension ideas: As a teacher, I would look up all of the places around the world that Helen Keller traveled, then we would locate those places on the globe. We would talk about how far she traveled and how scary it must have been to do everything that she did, all while deaf and blind. We would also talk about how we should never let anything hold us back from achieving great things in life.

2. Helen Keller, by Nigel Hunter, Illustrated by Richard Hook, and published in 1986 by Franklin Watts, is a fascinating biography chapter book on Helen Keller. What stood out to me were the marvelous illustrations, the point of view, and that the book pushed me the reader to read, examine, and think about Helen’s later life. The illustrations in this book are some of the best that I have come across this semester doing these reading logs. The illustrations are done in beautiful pastel paints that give great detail to the characters and the scenery. The best example of this is on page 12. We can clearly see the concentration in Annie’s face as she is teaching Helen about water. We see the ruffles in Annie’s dress and the details of the bow in her hair. There is a great amount of detail in the water spigot. The metal handle is clearly drawn with great detail in its lines and even a coating of rust around the mouth. The illustrator also put some of his illustrations next to actual pictures of people or houses. The comparison of the two again shows how detailed the illustrations are. Page 20 shows a picture of Helen Keller and an illustration of her in her dorm room at her school. The attention to detail in the illustration compared to the picture is stunning. The author managed to even capture the detail of the tiny letters on the typewriter. The point of view of this biography is obviously in third person. This is the perfect type of style for a biography. I have read other biographies written in first person and the story just doesn’t click. With third person writing in Helen Keller, I got to experience how Helen Keller navigated life with her disabilities. Third person writing also let me the reader see what other people thought of Helen with an unbiased view. In this biography there are people who say that she will never amount to anything and that she should be put in a home. In first person narrative this might be all that I would read. In third person narrative I read why a person felt this way. An example of this is in the chapter Hope for Helen. In this chapter we see how her teacher Anne Sullivan had hope for her and how she would not give up on Helen. What I liked about this story is that it went into Helen Keller’s later life. A lot of Biographies only got into Helens early adult life hood. This book examines goes beyond that examining her political activism, public appearances, and her influence on the disabled community today. The book talks about how Helen campaigned for women’s rights and how her public appearances helped those with disabilities find hope. Overcoming disabilities resilience and courage are at the center of the Big Ideas for this story. Helen must learn at a very early age how to overcome her disabilities and how to navigate life with them. She must be resilient to her disabilities and not let them get in her way. Lastly she must have the courage to concur her disabilities and wrongs that were facing women in the 1920s. ( )