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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J 921 KELLER | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Helen Keller has always been a shining example of courage in the face of unbelievable adversity. This lively biography goes beyond Helen's youth and learning process and includes many fascinating details of her later life, including her college years and involvement with politics.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-In a smooth, readable narrative, the drama of Keller's life unfolds. Annie Sullivan's remarkable teaching efforts that allowed Helen to communicate with the world are riveting to read. Keller's later life is perhaps less well known to children familiar with the "Miracle Worker" story. Her struggles through high school and her acceptance to and graduation from Radcliffe, her social and political activism, her adult relationship with Annie and Annie's husband, John Macy, and the "love affair" with her secretary Peter Fagan are carefully described using passages from Keller's autobiographies. The use of primary-source material (although not footnoted) brings the subject's vibrant personality, intelligence, and sensitivity to life in a way no narrative alone could. It is amazing to read about the woman's travels, and her influence in changing world opinion about the treatment of the blind. Black-and-white photographs show different periods of her long lifetime, and enhance the drama of the text. A fine addition to any collection.-Jennifer Ralston, Harford County Public Library, Belcamp, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Popular knowledge of Helen Keller tends to stop at the waterspout where Helen, thanks to teacher Annie Sullivan, discovered that the cool liquid flowing over her hand-and everything else in the world-had a name. This accessible, self-assured biography takes readers beyond the celebrated ""miracle"" to the complex woman Helen Keller became. In recounting the events of Keller's life, which, by any standards, was accomplished, Dash judiciously examines the relationships that helped shape it. The primary of these was with Sullivan, whose volatile personality provoked many into assuming she was exploiting her blind and deaf pupil for her own glory. Recurring throughout Dash's narrative are instances where people questioned whether Helen's remarkable achievements were really her own, or whether she was a mere puppet for her teacher and other interested parties. (When Helen took tests at Radcliffe, from which she was eventually graduated cum laude, Dash reports that Annie Sullivan was required to leave the building.) In later years, after Helen had joined the Socialist party and began making speeches promoting its ideals, a New York newspaper dismissed her, saying, ""Nobody can have the heart to criticize poor little Helen Keller for talking when opportunity offers. Talking is to her a newly discovered art, and it matters not if she does talk of things concerning which she knows nothing."" But Dash's Helen, while undeniably dependent on others in many respects, is neither pathetic nor ignorant. The World at Her Fingertips contains thorough and engrossing accounts of the logistics of Helen's daily life-for instance, how she learned to speak by placing her hand inside the instructor's mouth to feel for lip and tongue positioning-and these accounts add up to an ambitious person, determined to master any undertaking. Dash doesn't try to hide her own opinions of the people she describes, and at times she is critical of how situations involving Helen were handled. Overall, readers will come away from this biography realizing how extraordinary Helen Keller was and, just as importantly, how she was a lot like everybody else. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Born in 1880 in a tiny backwater in Alabama, Helen Keller lived a life familiar to many from the play and movie The Miracle Worker, as well as countless biographies. Theres no denying the drama in the story of the deaf and blind child for whom the world of language became possible through a dedicated and fanatically stubborn teacher, Annie Sullivan. But Helens life after that is even more remarkable: she went to high school and then to Radcliffe; she was a radical political thinker and a member of the Wobblies; she supported herself by lecture tours and vaudeville excursions as well as through the kindness of many. Dash (The Longitude Prize, p. 1483) does a clear-sighted and absorbing job of examining Annies prickly personality and the tender family that she, Helen, and Annies husband John Macy formed. She touches on the family pressures that conspired to keep Helen from her own pursuit of love and marriage; she makes vivid not only Helens brilliant and vibrant intelligence and personality, but the support of many people who loved her, cared for her, and served her. She also does not shrink from the describing the social and class divisions that kept some from crediting Annie Sullivan and others intent on making Helen into a puppet and no more. Riveting reading for students in need of inspiration, or whore overcoming disability or studying changing expectations for women. (Biography. 10-14)
Booklist Review
Gr. 4^-7. Dash begins her account of Helen Keller's life with the fever that left the child blind and deaf at the age of 19 months. Keller's story would be extraordinary in any telling, but Dash's straightforward account seems closer to reality than the more idealized stories sometimes offered to children. Keller emerges here not as a symbol or an inspiration, but as a determined, sometimes obstinate woman who was extraordinarily dependent on others in some ways, despite her personal drive toward independence. For example, financial need led her to accept Andrew Carnegie's offer of a pension for life, which Keller had initially refused because of her socialist principles. Illustrated with photographs, this well-researched biography will find a place in many libraries. --Carolyn Phelan
Table of Contents
1 Tuscumbia | p. 1 |
2 Tewksbury | p. 11 |
3 Teacher Arrives | p. 18 |
4 Finger-Talk | p. 29 |
5 Boston | p. 41 |
6 The Frost King | p. 51 |
7 New York | p. 65 |
8 Cambridge | p. 73 |
9 The Assault on Radcliffe | p. 87 |
10 Inside the Ivor Tower | p. 97 |
11 The Story of My Life | p. 106 |
12 We Three | p. 119 |
13 The Conversion | p. 127 |
14 In the Thick of it | p. 141 |
15 A Love Story | p. 149 |
16 "Lights! Camera!" | p. 159 |
17 On the Road Again | p. 168 |
18 Another New Career | p. 176 |
19 The Safe Future | p. 190 |
20 Without Teacher | p. 196 |
21 The End | p. 209 |
Bibliography | p. 223 |
Acknowledgments | p. 225 |
Index | p. 227 |