I am Helen Keller

Title: I am Helen Keller
People Change the World series
Author: Brad Meltzer
Illustrated by: Christopher Eliopoulos
38 pages
Dial Book for Young readers
ISBN: 978-0-525-42851-0
Juvenile reading level
Review by: Allen Klingelhoets

I story is told through the young adult Helen Keller. She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27 1880. The book tells how Helen was born with sight and hearing. She got sickness when nineteen months old she got very sick. The doctors thought she would not live. Helen did live, but the sickness made her blind and deaf. The artist used device of two black pages to show that Helen could not see anything. The text said "Close your eyes and block your ears. I couldn't see anything. Or hear anything. That's right. Nothing. The book tells that people did not know how to deal with people that were blind and deaf. Her relatives thought she was a monster. Helen grew very frustrated finding ways to communicate with others. She learned several ways on her own to communicate. She could not though do things like get her dog Belle to play with her. Helen's parents never gave up on her even though other people told them to give up on their daughter. Her parents read book about another blind and deaf girl and gained hope from book. They learned that there are places that teach deaf and blind children. They decided Helen needed a teacher.

When Helen was six years old, she met her teacher, Anne Sullivan. The teacher changed Helen's life. Helen learned how to communicate learning to spell words in palm of Anne's hand. Like word D-O-L-L. Helen grew very frustrated learning how to spell words. It was much harder to communicate what word she had spelled meant like for example word water.

From time learned word water Helen understood that every word had a meaning and wrote words into her teacher's hand, Helen had someone who could understand her. Helene had a huge breakthrough when learned how to read books wrote in braille, which is a series of lines and dots read with fingers. The complete English alphabet was shown wrote in braille. I ran my index finger over letters. I would have hard time reading braille. The world was opened to new wonders when Helen learned how to read braille. Helen read books in braille for example, The Arabian Knights, Robinson Crusoe and one of her favorites, Little Women. In those pages she met brave boys and girls who could hear and see.

It was said that one of Miss Sullivan's best lessons came when she showed Helen how to make plants grow.

When Helen was nine years old, she wanted to learn how to speak.

There were many other things Helen learned as grew older into adult to fight for social change. She wrote 14 books and visited thirty-nine countries. She fought to have others with disabilities get education. Her family had money to help her get education. She fought to give every person with disabilities an equal chance at education. Today, American Foundation for the Blind and Helen Keller International continue to help the blind and hungry. I am Helen Keller book talked about other organizations she supported like being early supporter of ACLV, to fight for free speech. She was also a supporter of NAACP, to get black people equal rights.

Helen died on June 1st, 1968. She's the first statue of a child in the U.S. Capital.

I even found Brad Meltzer drawn into story.
The book ends with Helen saying:
In my life, they said I was different.
They said I'd never be normal.
But the truth is, there's no such thing as a "normal" life.
Every one of us is like a flower that must be watered.
Every one of us is full of potential.
And every one of us can overcome obstacles.
Look at me.
Hear my words.
I might not be able to see, but I have a vision.
I may not be able to hear, but I have a voice.
Think of your life as a hill that must be climbed.
There's no correct way to get to the top.
We all zigzag in our own ways.
At some point, you'll slip,
you'll fall,
you'll tumble back down again.
But if you get back up and keep climbing, I promise you....
You will reach the top.
Don't let anything hold you back.
Our lives are what we make of them.
There will always be obstacles.
But there will always be ways around them.
I am Helen Keller.
And I won't let anything stop me.

What says inside front cover:

What makes a hero?

When Helen Keller was very young, she got a disease that forever destroyed her ability to see or hear. But Helen wasn't a quitter, and with the help of a wonderful patient teacher named Anne Sullivan, she learned how to communicate- at first through hand gestures and then through speech. She also learned how to read, thanks to an amazing invention called Braille. Helen was the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college, and spent the rest of her life helping others and making her voice heard.

This lively New York Times bestselling biography series inspires kids to dream big, one great role model at a time. You'll want to collect each book.

We can all be heroes!


Allen Klingelhoets