Helen Keller's Best Friend Belle

September 1, 2013

PreS-Gr 2-Keller was a lifelong dog lover. When an illness at a young age left her blind and deaf, and feeling alone and afraid, she found solace in the family pets. Belle, an Irish setter, became her closest companionas she struggled to communicate and discovered the world around her through her lessons with Anne Sullivan. Examples of Sullivan's teachings are supported by individual placards representing each letter/sign in the words Helen learned. As her world opened up, the warm illustrations become suffused with light. The complete alphabet in Braille is inserted in the middle of the narrative and displayed on the endpapers in sign language. This brief introduction to Keller's early life concludes with a note on her love of dogs and a brief biography of her later years. A pleasant companion to David A. Adler's A Picture Book of Helen Keller (Holiday House, 1990).-Janet Weber, Tigard Public Library, OR

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2013
Helen Keller's life is summarized for younger children in this attractively illustrated biography that uses Keller's love for dogs as a unifying thematic thread. The story focuses on Keller's childhood, summarizing her early life in rural Alabama and the arrival in 1887 of her teacher, Anne Sullivan. Keller's favorite dog, an Irish setter named Belle, is beside Keller as she learns from her teacher how to communicate with finger spelling. Teacher and student travel to Boston together, where Keller begins to learn how to speak, and she is able to call her dog to her when they return home to Alabama. This portion of the book is structured in a traditional picture-book format, using limited text and large-format illustrations that will work well for reading aloud to young children. The final few pages shift to more complex text describing additional dogs owned by Keller throughout her life as well as a summary of her college education, lecture tours and philanthropic work in her later years. This dual structure makes the book suitable both for young children and for older children looking for biographical information for school reports. While Helen Keller's love of dogs isn't an integral part of her personal biography, it's an interesting hook to draw children into the story of this fascinating, inspirational woman. (Picture book/biography. 4-10)

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