Saturday, November 22, 2008

Helen's Eyes: A Photobiography of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's Teacher

Helen's Eyes: A Photobiography of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's Teacher
by Marfe Ferguson Delano
National Geographic
63 pages

The epic story of Annie Sullivan, the pioneering teacher who overcame disability and misfortune before achieving her success as one of the most famous educators of all time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This book, while found in the library’s children’s section, is not geared towards children at all—at least not those under at least 6th or 7th grade. Long pages of text filled with bigger words are needed to fit in all the information this book packs. Despite the length and depth of this book, it does provide a very interesting and informative read. While I would not recommend it for pleasure-reading at all, I would highly, highly recommend it for middle school famous person reports.

Teresa said...

I appreciate how the author addresses the connectedness of the Helen and Annie. Annie's brilliance is often passed over by Helen's brilliance. Without one, the other would have been lost.

The photographs overlaid over other photographs distracted me. I found the photo underneath to be a frustrating in that I couldn't read the document. I always wonder how much of that should be considered a reader's job -- if I, the reader, am interested in more information, I should move to that next step and find it. That's something I would like to discuss further with the group on Saturday: the importance or non-importance of expectations of your reader to find out more, to let the author's work be a jumping board for your own.