Annie and Helen (review)

After providing a brief recap of the lives of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, Hopkinson proceeds in this picture-book biography to focus on what is perhaps the most engrossing aspect of Keller’s life for a child reader—the process by which Sullivan led her isolated student out of silence and darkness into full communication with her world. Each section begins with an excerpt from a letter from Sullivan to a friend at the Perkins Institution for the Blind: “She has tyrannized over everybody. . . . To get her to do the simplest thing . . . it was necessary to use force.” Thus she introduces the bitter battles that ensued over ink bottles and table manners. Of course, brighter days lay ahead after little Helen began to finger-spell: “Helen is learning adjectives and adverbs as easily as she learned nouns.” Hopkinson then explains how Sullivan methodically taught Helen the concept of numbers by spelling “puppy,” letting her feel the animals, spelling “puppies,” holding up a finger for each puppy counted, and then spelling the total number, “five.” The generous excerpts from Sullivan’s correspondence attest to the teacher’s growing pride in her student, and by the final entry she describes a girl who had raced from wordlessness to emergent reading and writing in just a few months. Attractive book design, with text sparingly parceled out onto ample white space and one or more large pictures in every spread, is unintimidating, and Colón’s line and watercolor artwork, though a bit on the tepid side, clearly conveys the mechanics of various methods of communication. Endpapers feature photographs of Keller and Sullivan, and brief lists for further print and online reading are included.