This is a good biography of Helen Keller (1880-1968), the blind and deaf girl who demonstrated that many things in life were still possible to those with physical challenges. This volume covers all the major events and important people in Keller's life. Because she was in the public spotlight for most of her years, this book talks about many of the great public figures and events of Keller's day. The book includes two sets of pictures, one from her early and one from her later years. You'll read about her personal struggles, her private fears, her education, her work, and her politics. And you'll be amazed at the full and productive life of one of the most remarkable women who ever lived.

From the time that she was six years old until the end of her long life, Helen was famous. It began as an accidental tragedy: she developed a fever that almost killed her when she was 19 months old. When she recovered, her sight faded slowly away; her parents learned that she had become deaf also. The last word to fade away from Helen was the word "water." Then there was nothing.

She lived the first few years of her life like a little savage, unable to be reached by those around her except in the most primitive of human communications, touch. She ate by roaming around the dinner table and sticking her hands into other people's plates. Nobody knew how to discipline a child who was so severely handicapped --- and it seemed cruel to discipline her at all. But Helen was highly intelligent, and she knew that other people could talk with their mouths in a way that she could not. Her rage at this "differentness" that she could not understand found its expression in what she later called the Phantom. When the Phantom side of Helen's personality appeared, she was wild, physically strong, and almost uncontrollable.

Then, when Helen was six years old, her parents learned about the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. They asked for a teacher to come and help Helen. And the school sent a 20-year-old girl who was barely sighted herself, Annie Sullivan. Annie, in one month, taught Helen what a word is and that everything has a name. With that one key, Annie opened the world to Helen and empowered her to become a part of it.

Helen was born in June 1880, on a farm in Alabama. She died a world-famous woman in June 1968. Her life spanned two world wars. She traveled around the entire globe. In 1904, she graduated cum laude (with praise) from Radcliffe College. During her career, she gave lectures, worked in vaudeville, and mingled with presidents, kings, and emperors. She helped to raise the world's consciousness about blindness and deafness. People became aware of what the handicapped could accomplish and that they didn't need to be pitied and shut away from the world.

Though it's a biography of Keller, this book really tells the story of two remarkable women, Helen and Annie. Throughout her long life, Helen remained devoted to Annie, whom she always called Teacher. As remarkable as Helen's hard work and life's achievement were, they were matched by Annie's. Annie Sullivan gave her entire life to the furtherance of Helen's experiences. It was Annie who sat beside Helen in every class during her college years, tapping into her hand everything the instructors said. And it was Annie who read her college texts to her endlessly, sacrificing her own failing eyesight to do so.

You will come away feeling empowered by this story about what can be accomplished when people dedicate their lives to a high purpose.