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It was on this day {June 1} 1968 that Helen Keller died in Westport, Connecticut at the age of 87. Blind and deaf from infancy, Keller circumvented her disabilities to become a world-renowned writer and lecturer.
Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, on a farm near Tuscumbia, Alabama. A normal infant, she was stricken with an illness at 19 months, probably scarlet fever, which left her blind and deaf. For the next four years, she lived at home, a mute and unruly child. You can read more about Helen’s life here.
I have greatly loved the story of Helen Keller all of my life. On several occasions I’ve had the chance to bring the story of Helen Keller to life for my children and our friends. Each time it is a deeply moving experience as we walk into the world of the blind and deaf.
Recently I had the pleasure of picking up Annie and Helen by Deborah Hopkinson with illustrations by Raul Colon at our indie bookstore Union Street Books.
The inspiring story of Annie Sullivan and her student Helen Keller has captured the hearts and imaginations of people for over a hundred years. This beautiful picture book, with excerpts of Annie’s own letters to her former teacher Mrs. Sophia C. Hopkins, shares the trials, joys, and inspirations of teaching Helen.
The telling of this story lends well to young readers as Annie opens Helen’s mind by making the world her classroom and we get to learn right along side her. Inside the pages of this well crafted story we discover Helen learning sign language, and learning to read and write in braille. It is because of Annie’s help that Helen Keller grew up to be the advocate for special needs people and a most accomplished woman of her time.
Other Helen Keller Reads:
Who Was Helen Keller? by Gare Thompson and Nancy Harrison
History for Kids: The Illustrated Life of Helen Keller by Charles River Editors
Helen Keller (Young Yearling Book) by Stewart Graff and Polly Anne Graff
Helen Keller: The World in Her Heart by Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome
Helen’s Big World: The Life of Helen Keller by Doreen Rappaport and Matt Tavares
Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller (Center for Cartoon Studies Presents) by Joseph Lambert
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller by Sarah Miller
Have you read any of these books? Have you read them as a family? Share your thoughts and experiences with us!
**Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links.
Want to enjoy month-by-month activities based on the classic children’s tale, The Secret Garden? A Year in the Secret Garden is over 120 pages, with 150 original color illustrations and 48 activities for your family and friends to enjoy, learn, discover and play with together. A Year In the Secret Garden is our opportunity to introduce new generations of families to the magic of this classic tale in a modern and innovative way that creates special learning and play times outside in nature. This book encourages families to step away from technology and into the kitchen, garden, reading nook and craft room. Learn more, or grab your copy HERE.
The post Honoring Helen Keller: A Helen and Annie Booklist appeared first on Jump Into A Book.
Now, a little over 7 years later, here are 7 fun facts Sarah shared with us about herself:
7 Things You Don't Know About Me
My favorite Yoga pose is dragon.
I can knit socks and crochet shawls.
I've visited Laura Ingalls Wilder's grave and slept in Lizzie Borden's bedroom.
True Grit (the one with Hailee Steinfeld) is my new favorite movie. Would you like me to recite the first ten minutes for you?
I shook hands with Rosa Parks.
I'm still afraid of the dark. (But I don't sleep with a nightlight anymore.)
The Kennedy assassination is quite possibly my next historical fascination.
By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: September 9, 2012
Enter to win a copy of Deborah Hopkinson’s biographical picture book Annie and Helen; illustrated by Raul Colon.
An original new book about two amazing women from history, Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller.
Giveaway begins September 9, 2012, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends October 7, 2012, at 11:59 P.M. PST.
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 48 pages
Overview
Author Deborah Hopkinson and illustrator Raul Colón present the story of Helen Keller in a fresh and original way that is perfect for young children. Focusing on the relationship between Helen and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, the book is interspersed with excerpts of Annie’s letters home, written as she struggled with her angry, wild pupil. But slowly, with devotion and determination, Annie teaches Helen finger spelling and braille, letters, and sentences. As Helen comes to understand language and starts to communicate, she connects for the first time with her family and the world around her. The lyrical text and exquisite art will make this fascinating story a favorite with young readers. Children will also enjoy learning the Braille alphabet, which is embossed on the back cover of the jacket.
About the Author
DEBORAH HOPKINSON is the author, most recently, of A Boy Called Dickens. She has written numerous other books, including Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building, an ALA Notable Book and a Boston Globe-Horn BookHonor Book; Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek, an ALA Notable Book and a Junior Library Guild Selection; and the ALA Notable Apples to Oregon. Her many other acclaimed titles include Under the Quilt of Night and Fannie in the Kitchen. Visit: http://www.deborahhopkinson.com
How to Enter
- Fill out the required fields below
Giveaway Rules
- Shipping Guidelines: This book giveaway is open to participants in the United States only.
- Giveaway begins September 9, 2012, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends October 7, 2012, at 11:59 P.M. PST, when all entries must be received. No purchase necessary. See official rules for details. View our privacy policy.
Prizing courtesy of Random House Children’s Books.
Original article: Giveaway: Annie and Helen by Deborah Hopkinson
©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.
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By Deborah Hopkinson, for The Children’s Book Review
Published: September 9, 2012
Recently I had the opportunity at my day job (I’m vice president for advancement at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon) to take the popular “Strengths Finder” test. My top strength turned out to be “Learner.”
I’d have to say that’s a fairly accurate description. It also explains much about how I choose the subjects I write about in my nonfiction and historical fiction for young readers. I have wide-ranging reading interests (I like to read with my story antennas up). When I’m learning something new, I’m engaged, enthuse, and happy. And then there are those magical moments when I come across something extraordinary that makes me sit up and say, “Wow! How come I never knew that before?” Whenever this happens, there’s a good chance I want to write about it.
That’s certainly true with my new nonfiction picture book, Annie and Helen, illustrated by Raul Colon. Like most people I knew the general outlines of Helen Keller’s life, and I was familiar with the iconic moment at the water pump. But I knew very little of Annie Sullivan, or the details of her actual teaching methods. What I found was astonishing – so astonishing I wanted to share it with young readers.
When I first began researching this book, I actually focused more on Annie Sullivan, whose early life was fraught with hardship. After her mother’s death, she and her little brother were put in an almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, where her brother later died. Annie, who’d become almost blind herself from trachoma, was able to go to the Perkins School for the Blind when she was 14. Operations partially restored her sight and she graduated in 1886 at the top of her class. The next spring, not quite 21, she set off alone from New England by train to take her first job: teaching a young deaf and blind child in Alabama named Helen Keller.
Annie Sullivan invented her own teaching methods, and that’s what I ultimately decided to write about in Annie and Helen. The book includes excerpts from Annie’s letters to her friend and former house mother, Mrs. Sophia Hopkins. The letters chronicle Helen’s progress and show how inventive and resourceful Annie was as she helped Helen make sense of the world through language. That spring must have been exhilarating for both teacher and student: by July, Helen had mastered enough skills to write a simple letter.
Illustration © 2012 by Raul Colon
Annie and Helen is not a “cradle to grave biography.” Instead, it covers the period of March-July 1887, when teacher and pupil forged their incredible relationship. While I have written traditional biographies for very young readers on John Adams and Susan B. Anthony, and on Charles Darwin for slightly older readers, I often prefer to focus on a specific incident or a time period in order to illuminate someone’s life. Keep On! focuses on Matthew Henson’s early life and Arctic explorations, A Band of Angels is about Ella Sheppard’s experiences as a Jubilee Singer, and A Boy Called Dickens shows Dickens at age 12, when he was working in a blacking factory.
My books also include both nonfiction and historical fiction. My 2012 title, Titanic: Voices from the Disaster is nonfiction. But rather than write a biography of Dr. John Snow, the pioneering epidemiologist who proved that cholera was spread by water, I chose to fictionalize the story in my forthcoming middle grade novel, The Great Trouble, A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel. Hopefully readers will enjoy the story, and also there’s a long author’s note included if they want to know more.
I hope I will also be a reader who wants to know more. And perhaps that’s also a reason for choosing to write about Helen Keller. What better inspiration for the love of learning could there be?
To find out more about Deborah Hopkinson’s books, visit: www.deborahhopkinson.com
You can also discover more by following along on the Annie and Helen Blog Tour
September 1st: Watch. Connect. Read
September 1st: SharpRead
September 2nd: Nerdy Book Club
September 3rd: Bakers and Astronauts
September 4th: Two Writing Teachers
September 5th: Cracking the Cover
September 6th: Teach Mentor Texts
September 7th: Nonfiction Detectives
September 8th: Booking Mama
September 9th: Children’s Book Review
September 10th: Random Acts of Reading
September 11th: 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Original article: Why Helen Keller? Selecting Subjects for Biographies
©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.
The brilliant writer Jane Yolen says the secret to why she’s so productive is BIC. Butt in chair. Obviously I’m no Jane Yolen, but I do know she’s absolutely right. I know my own derriere needs to spend way more quality time in the chair in front of my computer. That my fingers need to spend more hours on the keyboard tapping out first, second, and third drafts. But I also know that even though I desperately need to commit myself to more BIC time if I’m ever going to finish anything or start something new, BIC is not enough for me. If I want to get anything written at all, I’ve got to get my bottom out of the chair and out the front door. At least once a day, and preferably more often, I need to get outdoors and walk. To “wonder as I wander out under the sky,” as one of my favorite carols puts it.
I do some of my best work on the streets. When my legs are moving and my lungs are filling with fresh air, words and ideas seem to flow more freely through my mind than when I’m seated in front of my computer, when the former copy editor in me questions every little word before it’s allowed to hit the screen. Those words that do make it down run the risk of being deleted within nanoseconds by this scornful critic.
But for some reason, when I’m walking the tree-lined roads of my neighborhood or the bike path by the Potomac River or even busy streets downtown—as long as I’m putting one foot in front of the other—it’s easier to cut my poor writer self a break. I turn the words and ideas and problems over and around and inside out and upside down and play with them. I dare to try crazy things, to be silly. I talk aloud a lot. If I’m working on a biography, I sometimes address my subject and ask him or her for help. By this point he or she has probably already crawled under my skin. How in the world, Professor Einstein, can I explain special relativity in a way that 10-year-olds will understand? Tell me, Annie Sullivan, how am I ever going to meet my deadline for your book if I can’t come up with a lead? I still get goose bumps when I think of the impatient voice that broke into my thoughts shortly after I asked that question. It was female, with a light Irish accent, and it upbraided me for being such a pitiful procrastinator: "Sure, if you'll stop lingering over the newspaper every morning for hours wasting time on things you don't even remember reading about later, then you'll have time to write my story. And be sure you do it well." Ouch. Annie would have reminded me about BIC, no doubt, but I think she would have also been sympathetic to my need to walk. She was a great lover of nature, and she built much of Helen’s early education around exploring the countryside together.
Lately I’ve had a new partner along for my WOW time. (I just created that acronym and I’m overruling copy-editor self to let it stay in this piece. It stands for Walk Out Words. What do you think? Maybe it should be Words Out Walking?) Anyway, two months ago my family got a new dog, a wonderful 14-month-old golden doodle named Hucksley. He came to us from ICAN (Indiana Canine Assistance Network), a really cool nonprofit organization that my sister works for. ICAN trains and places skilled service d
PERKINS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND.
OMG. Everywhere I turned, there were photos and sculptures and tributes and exhibits related to Dr. Howe, Laura Bridgman, Michael Anagnos, Annie Sullivan, and Helen Keller. I should have taken more pictures, but I was mostly wandering around feeling stupidly joyful at "meeting" so many of my imaginary friends.
In the Samuel P. Hayes Research Library, this was
waiting for me:
Thirty-six binders full of notes and correspondence belonging to Nella Braddy Henney, author of the very first biography of Anne Sullivan. There were dozens of pages of scribbled jottings in Annie's own handwriting. As you might imagine, I got a little verklempt. I also got intimately acquainted with the photocopy machine:
___
*I've neglected to mention Stop/Adventure #2, which was the ALA midwinter conference Boston. More on that later. Maybe. (I didn't take nearly enough pictures.)
***We interrupt this blog hiatus to bring you the following review***
BEYOND THE MIRACLE WORKER:
The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy
and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller
by Kim E. Nielsen(Beacon Press)
Maybe it seems counter-intuitive to write a solo biography of Anne Sullivan Macy -- who would have heard of her if not for Helen Keller, right? Even for someone who's as nutzoid for Annie as I am, it's odd at first to read a biography in which Helen Keller gets so obviously sidelined. However, much as I value Joseph Lash's dual biography, Helen and Teacher, and as much as the two women's lives were intertwined, reading Nielsen's solo examination of Annie reveals just how much of a distraction keeping up with Helen Keller creates for those of us interested the intricacies of Annie Sullivan.
Without the focus constantly swinging toward the details of Helen's existence, vital elements like Annie's disabilities and mercurial personality virtually become characters in their own right. In fact, Nielsen shows that Annie's wavering eyesight, chronic pain, recurring illnesses, and lifelong bouts of melancholy were more debilitating than Helen's blindness and deafness -- though no one who spent 40-odd years standing next to a deaf-blind icon would dare draw attention to that fact. Not even saucy Annie Sullivan.
While many biographers tend to frame the hardships in Annie's early life as a rags-to-riches buildup to her successes as Helen Keller's famous teacher, Nielsen details the lingering effects of Annie's childhood traumas on her adult relationships and behavior. The truth of the matter is that Annie Sullivan was damaged goods, and even the salve of Helen's decades-long friendship never fully closed those wounds. No matter how much Helen loved and venerated her, Anne Sullivan Macy was not an easy woman to live with. Fortunately for the rest of us, all the extremes that made her such a trial and a delight make for a fascinating read under Nielsen's steady gaze.
***************
Addendum:
I am vicariously incensed with Publisher's Weekly for referring to this book as "lightly fictionalized autobiography." In fact, NONE of Nielsen's writing in this biography can be characterized in any way as fictionalized. On the contrary, Nielsen uses Anne Sullivan Macy's own lightly fictionalized autobiographical writings as a source for her work, but clearly indicates between documented facts and the autobiographical stories of 'Johannah [Annie] and Jimmie Dunnivan' culled from Macy's unpublished memoirs. *humpf*
I know, I know, I know. All that stuff I said yesterday about not blogging? Forget that for a minute, because....
Today is Annie Sullivan's birthday, and just lookit what appeared in my mailbox:
My very own signed copy, which I proudly ensconced in plastic less than 10 minutes after its arrival. I fell for this book nearly two years ago when Kim gave me the chance to read an early manuscript, and I can't wait to read it all over again. Judging by the way I raced through the intro, though, I should maybe calm the heck down so I can actually see the words. (Although I did manage to focus long enough to pick out my own name on page 270. Heh.) For now, I'm carrying this thing around like a new puppy.
**********************
Currently reading (duh):
Beyond the Miracle Worker
by Kim E. Nielsen
I'm having a little trouble being coherent, so just go read the news:
Wouldn't that have been positively killer in Miss Spitfire? *sigh*
And now, back to your regularly scheduled WIP marathon....
Build me an ark! For the rivers have burst their banks, and we have no eggs. This is serious. Although maybe not as serious as my friend finding half the Evenlode river come to stay at her house (uninvited), and flood water in her kitchen cupboards. She has lived here all her life and cannot remember weather like it. It's as if Old Father Thames and his children have thrown a party which got slightly out of control. Nearby Brize Norton had the most amount of rainfall in recorded history; 4.6 inches. Yesterday it rained and rained and rained some more. It was so bad that the cats called a truce and in a moment of solidarity decided to share the sofa...
It was so bad that today Andy decided to dig up the remainder of his precious potato crops.
which one of these is not a potato, can you guess? 
- was somewhat flooded. This is the Evenlode getting a bit leery after tanking it up all night. The same river which runs near my friends' house and popped in to say hello, without knocking at the door.
(click on picture for full technicolour panoramic experience)
It became apparent that the county's drivers were experiencing a rare experience - not being able to go where they wanted precisely when they wanted. I have this all the time, being a non-driver, and one likes it or, as my old dad used to say, one lumps it. An irate lady in an SUV asked me if I thought it was safe to cross (what do you think lady, the river is pounding over the road, the currents look treacherous, there's already a car stranded in the ditch - hmm...tough call). I replied that no, I didn't think so, not even (I had to add, inwardly grinning) in 'one of those', nodding at her silver tank.In fact, as I returned up the hill and took an alternate route, the roads were full of righteously fuming people raging at the weather gods, clamping their foot on the accelerator to make up for lost time and whizzing past me at more mph than they strictly should have been. I took the path running past the woods, able to nip through minor floods where vehicles were struggling. The ducks at the deserted farm were rejoicing -
- and when we got to our destination...
...the village flock had enrolled in military service and were on parade. Left, right, left right, at the double!
I squelched onwards,past kids in wellies wading gleefully through pools of water, past the postman doing sterling service and passing on news door to door of the local floods - even in the age of the internet, this kind of first hand reporting is vital in our rural area. And so on to the egg place, not as picturesque as the rural idylls I see in certain lifestyle magazines, and all the better for it. It has geraniums, and clematis, a sleepy black labrador and a weather vane. So who cares about the plastic sacks and the baler twine?
It is self service. As long as you have gone through the initiation and people know who you are, you simply stroll across the yard, past the kennel...
...past the friendly doorstop...
...pop in to the outer hall, pick your eggs, and leave your money. A rather old fashioned, quaint form of shopping which relies entirely on honesty and trust. I always go for the ones with muck on, as they've been collected that very morning.
And so we returned through the swampy mire which is Oxfordshire at the moment, with our precious cargo of fresh eggs. Hercules has had to carry many things in his job as my personal chauffeur, and he prefers eggs to dead snakes. Tonight Andy and I will feast on potatos and eggs, and feel thankful that we have been spared the ravages of this bizarre monsoon season. 
Well, Well, Well, Who's that callin'?Well, Well, Well, Hold my hand.Well, Well, Well, Night is a-fallin',Spirit is a-movin' all over this land. Lord told Noah, Build him an ark,Build it out of hickory bark.Old ark a-movin', and the water start to climb,God send a fire, not a flood next time.
(Peter, Paul and Mary, 'Well, Well, Well' which has to be one of my many favourite songs of all time)
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I'm with you 100%. I find that my some of my best phrasing, or ideas for approaches, or general aha moments float by when I'm farthest away from being able to write them down. Ironic, or not ironic at all--because they are often also times when your mind can wander freely. So for me, it's usually on a walk or in the shower.
BIC butt in chair
HOK hands on keyboard
TAM typing away madly
(not my acronyms either - maybe they are all from the fabulous JY)
I'm in agreement.
I call my preference to fire my writing/thinking neurons by daily walking -
locomotion lotion.
Huck is a charmer, as seen from this beautiful portrait photo & your personality description.
And I'm not a dog person.
Congratulations Marfe!