Annie and Helen

Gr 2-5–In this lucid picture book, readers follow Annie Sullivan’s journey to teach young Helen Keller, at age seven, noted for her tantrums. Most know that Sullivan used the manual alphabet to fingerspell in the child’s hand, but what is breathtakingly shown here, through accurate, cross-hatched watercolor paintings; excerpts from Sullivan’s correspondence to her former teacher; and concise and poetic language, is the woman’s patience and belief in the intelligence of her student to grasp the concepts of language. The first epiphany was at the outdoor pump when the girl comprehended that w-a-t-e-r was a word. “Now Helen began to devour words.” Sullivan, then moved beyond names for things, “spoke” to Keller constantly and naturally, spelling rich, wonderful sentences into her palm, “like a mother to a child.” Helen quickly started learning written language: letters, words, and with word flashcards, sentences. Sensitively wrought illustrations clearly depict her learning written English via raised letters. Most transcendent of all is a full-page copy of Helen’s first letter home. The endpapers offer a dozen photos of the pair, and an embossed Braille alphabet adorns the back cover. While there is some fictionalization, it resides most firmly in fact, elucidating the brilliant process of educating the deaf and blind pioneered by Annie Sullivan. Pair this book with Emily Arnold McCully’s My Heart Glow (Hyperion, 2008), the story of one of Helen’s predecessors, Alice Cogswell, and her teacher Thomas Gallaudet, whose relationship resulted in the birth of American Sign Language for teaching the Deaf.–Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School, New York City