Review

Helen and Teacher

This book tells the story of two remarkable women: Helen Keller, blind and deaf since the age of one, and Anne Sullivan, her life-long teacher. It is the inspiring story of their joint effort to awaken Helen 's conceptual mind. Lash gives Helen's adult description of her grasping her first concept, "water":

As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she [Anne] spelled into the other the word "water," first slowly, then rapidly, , , , Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten-a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that W -A- T -E-R meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. , ..I left the wellhouse eager to learn, Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house, every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life.

This is a moving and instructive book.

(811 pages)

This review is courtesy of and copyright © by the Ayn Rand Bookstore.

Books

• Helen and Teacher by Joseph P. Lash.