A review by referencegrrrl
Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller, by Joseph Lambert
4.0
Imagine learning to dance. But you can’t hear the music.
Imagine riding horseback. But you can’t see to keep your balance and not fall off.
In her lifetime, blind and deaf Helen Keller learned to do both. She
Our story opens with a little girl drawn without features, completely in the dark. She is angry, she is scared, she is combative. This is Helen Keller and this is her world.
Enter Annie Sullivan, the woman who is hired by Helen’s parents to teach Helen to communicate. Annie grew up in an orphanage, and had vision problems of her own. She couldn’t read or write until she was 14. But she was strong and stubborn and determined to succeed.
When she got to Helen, those traits served her well. Helen’s parents – well, mostly her father – didn’t care for her teaching style. The Captain insisted that Annie’s teachings bordered on abuse, and but her mother insisted she stay.
Annie’s primary goal was to teach Helen that everything had a name. But how can she teach the word “cake” to someone who’s never seen one? How can she teach the word “doll” to someone who’s never seen one?
Meanwhile, in a series of flashbacks, we learn a little more about how Annie grew up, and how she came to be the teacher that Helen desperately needed.
But slowly, while dealing with tantrums and struggles and arguments with Helen’s parents, Annie’s methods began working.
Annie made great strides in working with Helen. So much so that when she was 11, Helen wrote a story as a birthday gift to Dr. Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind. But some people thought that the story was not Helen’s idea, that perhaps she plagiarized the story from someone else. Will this undermine Annie’s work? Will it devalue Helen’s progress? And will it bring down the man and the school that fought tirelessly for them both?
Imagine riding horseback. But you can’t see to keep your balance and not fall off.
In her lifetime, blind and deaf Helen Keller learned to do both. She
Our story opens with a little girl drawn without features, completely in the dark. She is angry, she is scared, she is combative. This is Helen Keller and this is her world.
Enter Annie Sullivan, the woman who is hired by Helen’s parents to teach Helen to communicate. Annie grew up in an orphanage, and had vision problems of her own. She couldn’t read or write until she was 14. But she was strong and stubborn and determined to succeed.
When she got to Helen, those traits served her well. Helen’s parents – well, mostly her father – didn’t care for her teaching style. The Captain insisted that Annie’s teachings bordered on abuse, and but her mother insisted she stay.
Annie’s primary goal was to teach Helen that everything had a name. But how can she teach the word “cake” to someone who’s never seen one? How can she teach the word “doll” to someone who’s never seen one?
Meanwhile, in a series of flashbacks, we learn a little more about how Annie grew up, and how she came to be the teacher that Helen desperately needed.
But slowly, while dealing with tantrums and struggles and arguments with Helen’s parents, Annie’s methods began working.
Annie made great strides in working with Helen. So much so that when she was 11, Helen wrote a story as a birthday gift to Dr. Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind. But some people thought that the story was not Helen’s idea, that perhaps she plagiarized the story from someone else. Will this undermine Annie’s work? Will it devalue Helen’s progress? And will it bring down the man and the school that fought tirelessly for them both?