VVMBookBlog

There’s something fascinating about the real-life story of how teacher Anne Sullivan was able to Helen to some basic discipline while beginning the process of connecting hand-spelled wordsteach Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind, how to learn and communicate words and ideas. Miss Spitfire is a fictional account of that story but based on real letters from Anne Sullivan.

Anne Sullivan had her own difficult life as a child and problems with her eyes which eventually brought her to the Perkins School for the Blind. From there she was recommended to the Keller family as someone who could help them with their daughter, Helen. This book gives a day-to-day look at what that first month with Helen must have been like as Anne introduces  to communication and language.  Helen’s wild out-of-control behavior at the start would be too much for most people to deal with, but Anne’s patience with Helen, and her courage standing up to Helen’s very permissive parents, helped lead to the miracle of teaching Helen to communicate.

How do you teach about words without using words or sounds?  It’s all pretty amazing!