Helen Keller was a hero and an icon in her own age as well as in ours: she lost her sight and hearing at 19 months; she was brought into the world of language by a young and fiercely determined teacher; she went to college, supported herself, and published voluminously at a time when women could scarcely do those things at all, let alone as disabled women. The author uncovers much of the complexities of Keller’s life: the prickly personality of teacher Anne Sullivan; the relationship of Helen and Anne with Helen’s family and the culture of the deep South; how both her fame and her family conspired to keep Helen more as a symbol than as a person rich in personality and contradiction. But Keller was deeply involved in the suffragist movement, the philosophy of Swedenborg, and socialism. She raised money through work on the vaudeville stage as well as in the movies and through support from benefactors. Moreover, she once had a fiancé who seems to have really loved her, although her family broke them apart. Rich in contemporary photographs, this treatment makes a fascinating, living being out of the plaster saint, and though it is not quite so engaging as Joan Dash’s The World at Her Fingertips (2000), it will be welcomed by those ardent fans of its subject. (chronology, notes, bibliography) (Biography. 10+)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8234-1588-0
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats.
Why should grown-ups get all the historical, scientific, athletic, cinematic, and artistic glory?
Choosing exemplars from both past and present, Mitchell includes but goes well beyond Alexander the Great, Anne Frank, and like usual suspects to introduce a host of lesser-known luminaries. These include Shapur II, who was formally crowned king of Persia before he was born, Indian dancer/professional architect Sheila Sri Prakash, transgender spokesperson Jazz Jennings, inventor Param Jaggi, and an international host of other teen or preteen activists and prodigies. The individual portraits range from one paragraph to several pages in length, and they are interspersed with group tributes to, for instance, the Nazi-resisting “Swingkinder,” the striking New York City newsboys, and the marchers of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. Mitchell even offers would-be villains a role model in Elagabalus, “boy emperor of Rome,” though she notes that he, at least, came to an awful end: “Then, then! They dumped his remains in the Tiber River, to be nommed by fish for all eternity.” The entries are arranged in no evident order, and though the backmatter includes multiple booklists, a personality quiz, a glossary, and even a quick Braille primer (with Braille jokes to decode), there is no index. Still, for readers whose fires need lighting, there’s motivational kindling on nearly every page.
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats. (finished illustrations not seen) (Collective biography. 10-13)Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-751813-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Puffin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
A detailed, absorbing picture of Chinese-American culture in the 50's and 60's, of particular interest to Yep's many...
In a strong debut for the new "In My Own Words" series, the author of The Star Fisher (see below) portrays his own youth.
Brought up in San Francisco, where his parents managed for years to defend a mom-and-pop grocery against an increasingly rough non-Chinese neighborhood, Yep went to Chinatown to attend a Catholic school and to visit his grandmother. Always aware of belonging to several cultures, he is a keen observer who began early to "keep a file of family history" and who tellingly reveals how writing fiction, honestly pursued, can lead to new insights: in putting his own "mean" teacher into one book, he began for the first time to understand her viewpoint. He divides his account topically, rather than chronologically, with chapters on the store, Chinatown, family tradition, being an outsider, etc., concluding with his college years ("Culture Shock") and some later experiences especially related to his writing. Always, Yep is trying to integrate his many "pieces" ("raised in a black neighborhood...too American to fit into Chinatown and too Chinese to fit in elsewhere...the clumsy son of the athletic family..."), until he discovers that writing transforms him "from being a puzzle to a puzzle solver."
A detailed, absorbing picture of Chinese-American culture in the 50's and 60's, of particular interest to Yep's many admirers or would-be writers. (Autobiography. 11-15)Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0688137016
Page Count: 117
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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