Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Helen Keller
Illustrator: John C. Wallner
Nonfiction
For ages 5 to 7
Holiday House, 2003 ISBN: 978-0823416066
Helen was a very clever little girl. She began to talk when she was just six months old and began to walk on her first birthday. Then tragedy struck just a few months before her second birthday. Helen got seriously ill and she lost both her ability to see and hear. Helen developed her own way to communicate using signs and she became an angry and very difficult child. Not surprisingly she hated the fact that people did not understand her that she could not understand them.
Luckily Helen's parents were very loving and patient and they decided that Helen needed a special kind of teacher to help her. So they went and looked for one. They went and asked Dr. Alexander Graham Bell for help and he recommended Anne Mansfield Sullivan. This young woman would, in time, completely change Helen's world, making it possible for Helen to communicate with the outside world so successfully that Helen ended up doing all kinds of things. She went to college, became a public speaker, traveled widely, wrote books, and she advocated for all kinds of causes that mattered to her.
This first-rate biography for young readers is sure to attract the interest of young girls and boys who have not yet been lucky enough to read about Helen Keller and her extraordinary life. Well written and warmly illustrated, this is one of the books in the "Holiday House Readers" series which features both fiction and non-fiction titles for children who are learning to read.
