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Summary: This book was terrible
Review: The book gave the impression that the author could see and hear, when in fact, she could do neither. The logical structure in this book was horrible.
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Summary: Educational, good information, BUT.... not fine literature.
Review: The book is educational, historic, somewhat interesting, but as far as great memoirs go, Keller was not a very good writer. Her book is full of purple prose. (If you are unfamiliar with the term, look it up, the term will last you a lifetime.)She may have been a greatly accomplished activist and spokesperson for various causes. She certainly accomplished more in one life time than most people could ever accomplish in thirty lifetimes, if they were granted the chance to live over and over. As far as accomplishments, Keller was outstanding. Nevertheless, Keller was no writer, novelist, or autobiographist of any literary merit. If you are looking to learn about Keller, read it. If you want fine literature, don't bother. Also, there are great gaps of Keller's life left out of this book. It portrays a prissy, lily white, sanitized version of Keller's life. Read other biographies of her life if you are interested in the truth. If not, don't bother. This book offers a small fraction of what Keller's life truly encompassed; the immensity of her later accomplishments are not contained in this book. Consequently, if you have always relied on this one book as a true portrayal of Keller, then you know nearly nothing about her. There is much, much more that she does not write about in "My Life". I would highly recommend this book for adolescents. In other words, both greatness and great deficiencies can be found in this book, it depends on what you are reading it for.
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Summary: The Story of my Life
Review: The book was very boring. Helen Keller had no sense of the facts or of time. She kept refering to "seeing" and "hearing". Wasn't she blind AND deaf? She would talk about her father dying and then talk about doing something with him. The book did not make any sense at all. I highly recomend not reading this book unless you HAVE to for school. Read a Helen Keller book not written by her or by Anne Sullivan.
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Summary: My 2nd favorite book!!
Review: The first time i read it in 3rd grade in my class i got really into that book.I loved that book because HELEN KELLER the writer wrote it and she had bad health when she was a little girl she couldn't see,and talk.It was hard for her to do all does things too comunicate with people and her family but there was this teacher that loved her and teach her a lot of things and Helen Keller appreciated her the teacher in showing her everything and having patience with her.This book is really good i love this book is my 2nd favorite book.I recomended to everybody.People you should read it.If you haven't read it buy it now it's really good true story of Helen Keller life.
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Summary: An Amazing Woman!
Review: The miraculous Helen Keller and her equally astounding teacher, Annie Sullivan, go into great detail of their struggles to overcome Helen's grave disabilities. It is so astounding, in fact, that it's almost incomprehensible. Helen's amazing mental ability, Annie's guidance and their mutual tenacity are surely to be credited. It is a wonderful story to read, especially so because it is told BY them and not as interpreted by a third-party biographer. Unfortunately, Helen's eloquence and the prose of the day can border on the flowery side (to be it mildly) which made me unable to push through as quickly as I might have otherwise. But then again, that's the beauty of her success story: it WASN'T too good to be true!
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Summary: good good good
Review: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller is an autobiography illustrating her insistent desire in learning how to write and read and defeating her deafness and blindness at the same time. This book records her life back from when she was as young as 4. Due to the loss of sight and hearing at the age of 19 months, Helen lived her life in frustration and pain in her early life. She couldn't understand her family because she didn't yet learn how to communicate. To solve that, her parents hired Ms. Anne Sullivan who influenced her the most. Even througt special education with Ms. Sullivan, Helen coulsn't communicate with her family without Ms. Sullivan's translations. Yet, Helen didn't give up. Her passion for learning how to read and write overcame the obstacles. Her improvements on reading, writing, and arithmetic amazed her teachers and family. She has succeeded in many many areas which helped her to get in college. On her way, there were events that made her learn that deafness can be conquered, such as the blind institution, etc. The students in blind institution were one of Helen's inspiration in learning. Since they lived states away, Helen must contact her friends by mail. That motivated Helen's will to write more. The attached letters in the book shows how much she's improved since she first started to write. This book has taught us lessons that we would never learn in everyday life. Helen Keller defeated her disabilities and lived went to college as a result of her hardworks. Her courage and insistence should be admired. Teenagers nowadays worry much more on appearance or etc rather than their future. This book shows the lesson of working hard, and anything would be possible.
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Summary: The Struggles and Triumphs of Helen Keller
Review: The Story of My life by Helen Keller is an awe-inspiring accomplishment by a woman who has not viewed a word after the ninteenth month of her life. Her style is contemporary with the age it was written in; the turn of the century 1900s. The author implements many devices in her work; such as Imagery, Current Events, and Personification.
The wonderous imagery that she uses can be seen in the winter scene. It is depicted through the descrptions of her teacher Anne Sullivan. Anne tried to describe everything in perfect detail to Helen which in turn must picture everything mentally and only dream about what we all take for granted. This effect adds to the piece by forcing the reader to wonder how she can make such vivid descriptions on her own. Yet, the truth is that she probably wrote the exact words that her teacher so vividly described to her though the manual language. The use of Current Events in this autobiography pertains to many known and famous events and people which were well known at the time and still today. Alexander Ghram Bell (the inventor of the telephone played a major factor in her life by reccomending her to the Perkins Institute for the blind/deaf. The 1893 World's Fair played an important role in the emphasis of the era in which she grew up in. The New York Worlds Fair gave Helen a chance to travel around the world without actually going anywhere but the park. Helen Keller had many dolls which she often played with. Like most girls she had a name for her favorite doll; it's name was Nancy. She fed it mudpies, and put button eyes on it. This added to the caring effect and the fact that Helen was just a small girl like all other girls evn thought she was so different. The autobiography of the first 20 years of Helen Keller's life is pretty imprssive but I dont think it gives us a full picture of the famous Keller that we know now. Much of her campaigning and spokeswoman work was done after she graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904. I recommend this book for educational reading. Perhaps some people will enjoy this book more than I, but the inconsistencies in her writing take away from the truthful meaning of the book. I give it four stars because of the impression it put on me. After all, it isn't everyday that a blind person graduates from college.
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Summary: INSPIRING!
Review: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller was an excellent autobiography that I would recommend to all. Her story captures its readers and inspires them to look deep within themselves. Blind and deaf at nineteen months, Helen's story tells of her courage and determination and of her remarkable relationship with Anne Sullivan, her beloved mentor. Helen's happiness is felt by the reader when she finds success in learning to communicate. This novel also includes letters that Helen wrote to friends and family sharing her accomplishments.
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Summary: Her own hero
Review: The Story of My Life, an autobiography of Helen Keller, is a motivating story of perseverance and struggle. On July 27th 1880, Helen Keller began her extraordinary life in Tuscumbia, Alabama. As a perky, young child, Helen was quick to learn. On the day of her first birthday, she began to walk, and she had been imitating speech since the age of six months. But tragedy struck, and Helen became severely ill. The doctor pronounced that she had "acute congestion of the stomach and brain," and that Helen would not survive (19). Then, one morning, the fever was gone, but it had left its mark upon Helen. From that day on, she could no longer see or hear and lived in a world of silence. As the months after her illness passed, Helen was shut out from the world she had only shortly known. On March 3, 1887, a teacher came and unlocked the door that held Helen away from the world. Helen's tale inspires the reader to persist and never give up because, by overcoming her challenges, Helen became her own hero.
Throughout the book, Helen's eagerness to learn is clearly depicted. She writes, "The desire to express myself grew. The few signs I used became less and less adequate, and my failures to make myself understood were invariably followed by outbursts of passion" (18). Without this yearning, Helen would have become quiet and naive, floating through life, unaffected. But, this was not Helen. Desire was the spark that kept Helen's mind alive, longing for a way of expression. "When her fingers were too tired to spell another word, I had for the first time a keen sense of my deprivations. I took the book in my hands and tried to feel the letters with an intensity of longing that I can never forget," Helen remembers, about a book that her teacher had been reading to her (64). Helen's strong need for knowledge and her difficulty in receiving it is passed to the reader who finds a sudden gratefulness for all that he knows.
Helen was faced with the many challenges that her physical disabilities brought to her. One of her earliest obstacles was overcoming her strong dislike for mathematics. "Arithmetic seems to have been the only study I did not like. From the first I was not interested in the science of numbers," Helen remembers (27). At first glance Helen's hatred of math appears to be simply a dislike common to many young children. On closer examination it is found that this is not the case, and Helen's hatred may stem from her difficulty in comprehending mathematical concepts. "I could not follow with my eyes the geometrical figures drawn on the blackboard, and my only means of getting a clear idea of them was to make them on a cushion with straight and curved wires, which had bent and straight ends," Helen recollects (55). With much determination, Helen looked beyond her hatred of math and worked harder, to overcome her obstacles and eventually graduate from Radcliffe College. By doing this Helen accomplished something that individuals often struggle with, and she taught others not to hide from their problems, but to analyze them, and try harder only then will they go away.
With increasing knowledge in Helen's life, her thoughts were open to greater parts of the world, such as feelings. "Knowledge is love and light and vision," Helen stated (19). On April 5, 1887, Helen became frustrated and tore through the house. In doing so, she shattered her new doll, a present from her teacher. She had no feelings of regret because she did not know the feeling of love. Later that day her life changed and her mind was opened to love and knowledge. She recalls, "On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow," (21). With Helen's realization of grief she also discovered love because in life one new idea often sparks another.
Through hard work and perseverance Helen's strong desire for knowledge helped her to overcome all her problems. Contradictory to ancient heroes, pride was not a part of Helen's personality. She dedicated the entire closing of her own book to the people who paved a way for her and taught her to how to make life wonderful. As Helen ends her story, "Thus it is that my friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation," (81). In her modesty Helen neglects to mention herself when stating the heroes of her story. This story by Helen Keller is motivating and inspiring, a wonderful tale of success.
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Summary: This was a great book!
Review: The Story of My Life:Helen Keller was a great book. It informed readers of life as she lived it. What really makes it interesting is that she had a life different from most everyones, being deaf, AND blind. She had many, many challenges in her life, that people who can see, and hear would not be able to relate to. This book really makes you appreciate all the gifts that you sometimes take for granted. This is a book for all ages, that I think anyone can enjoy. Helen Keller is a very unike, and interesting person, and it is neat to remember her life as she shares it with us.
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