Gare Thompson

Hearing Hellen Keller's name rings a bell to all people, but what do they really know of her life? Only that she was blind and deaf. This children's chapter book gives more insight into her falling ill and becoming deaf and blind. It talks of how she and her family became frustrated. This book focused on the bond and contribution that Anne Sullivan made for Helen. Without Anne's courageousness and bravery to help Helen she may not have gotten as far as she did. She went from barely show more communicating simple words to spelling words on peoples hands. She struggled to attend school and this book captured her lonely and excluded feelings. This book shows Helen as a stubborn yet inspiringly determined girl. She applied to college and worked endlessly to achieve her best effort works, she had many speeches and went on to publish articles in magazines that later became a book. She then also created books and plays about her and Anne's life. She is a symbol of how anything is possible if you just believe and work toward your goals. I would teach my kids in the future about her and possibly with this book. The style of this book of including details to better inform like sign language, Alexander Graham Bell, Anna Sullivan, Perkins school, Laura Bridgman, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Louis Braille, and the Braille system and even Franklin D. Roosevelt taught background information on their contribution to Helen's life. show less

This children's chapter book belongs to the Who Was series. The Who Was series is a great series to transition young readers from easy picture books to chapter books in the genre of biographies. The book has a reading level of 3.4. In this book, readers are not bombarded with facts but follow the story of the life of Helen Keller.
The thing I enjoyed the most about the book was how the author includes the other people who helped Helen Keller along her journey. Many times I find that show more biographies tend to focus on the person accomplishments without discussing how other people help them move towards success or even helped them overcome some obstacles. In this book, the author includes Keller’s teacher. Without her teacher, Annie, Helen Keller would not have accomplished so much in her lifetime. Another thing I love about the book is the mini-biographies found throughout the book. Such people featured in the book are Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Louis Braille, and Alexander Graham Bell.
The flaw of the book is that it focuses too heavily on Keller’s childhood. A very small percentage of the book is devoted to covering her adulthood. Due to the way the book is written the reader gets a great sense of Keller’s personality as a child, but little on what she was like as an adult. Even with this major flaw I still feel the book is a great biography about the life of Helen Keller for 3-4 graders. show less

I think this would be a good book for a 4th or 5th grade class to use as a research novel. If I was doing a history lesson in 5th grade I would use this to introduce a different part of history that most people do not think about. It would connect nicely with an ELA informational text standard with chronological order and sequencing events while learning information relating to history. For a 4th grade class I would use this to talk about character traits and have the students focus on show more Eleanor and other characters' traits and discuss them as a class. It would be a good opportunity to introduce some new describing words to expand their vocabulary and get them thinking about what makes characters unique and how their traits relate to a topic. It is very obvious that Eleanor was a strong, independent, smart woman and having students thinking about these will give them a better understanding of all the wonderful things she accomplished throughout her life. show less

I enjoyed this story for a few reasons. I liked the black and white illustrations throughout the story, especially the timeline because it helps students visualize the different dates overtime. The writing was very interesting and engaging, especially when the author tells us interesting facts such when Helen became deaf and blind and the young age of two. I like the characters and I think that they were well-developed. As a reader, we want Helen Keller to learn how to write and read and can show more feel the frustration that she and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, encounter throughout the process. The big idea of this story is to teach the reader the importance of Helen’s life and how she was able to accomplish things after practicing over and over again. show less