Edu-Manga: Helen Adams Keller - Softcover

Yanagawa, Sozo; Yagi, Rie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569709769 ISBN 13: 9781569709764

Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing, 2005

Synopsis

• Helen Keller was robbed of her sight, hearing and speech at an early age due to a childhood illness. Nevertheless, she overcame her disabilities with the love and tenacious teachings of her tutor Anne Sullivan and the encouragement of other individuals such as Alexander Graham Bell. This is the courageous story of one woman's amazing triumph of will over her impairments and the inspiring legacy she left behind. Join Astro Boy and his friends as they learn what it is like to live without something we take for granted everyday.

About this title

From School Library Journal

Grade 3-7– Japanese icon Astro Boy visits the Tokyo Helen Keller Association; through his experiences, readers are presented with a biography of the renowned activist. The book begins before and continues long after Henry Gibson's famous play, The Miracle Worker, giving an interesting amount of detail beyond the traditional obstacles overcome story. However, not all of the details are faithful; accounts of Annie Sullivan's spunky attitude toward Keller's parents and the frequent inclusion of Helen's stepbrother James do not seem to mesh with Keller's autobiography or the documents in Richard Harrity's The Three Lives of Helen Keller (Doubleday, 1962; o.p.). Additionally, the visual depiction of Keller doesn't remotely resemble her many photographs, which seems odd for a biography in a visual medium. And since the volume was originally written for a Japanese audience, the script still retains a heavy slant toward the subject's visits to Japan and the founding of the Tokyo Association. While an informative read, with an interesting side message about plagiarism, the liberties taken with the dramatic re-enactment of events prevents this from being a trustworthy resource that can ensure the Edu- portion of the series title.–Benjamin Russell, The Derryfield School, Manchester, NH
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From Publishers Weekly

Is anything more incongruous than a biography of Helen Keller introduced by superpowered robot Astro Boy? Yet the adaptation works better than it has any right to. The Edu-Manga series presents Astro Boy hosting graphic novels that recount the lives of such historical figures as Beethoven, Einstein and Anne Frank for young readers. While the framing sequences with Astro Boy are drawn in creator Osamu Tezuka's exaggeratedly cartoony style, Yagi's artwork for the biographical material is comparatively more realistic and considerably more dramatic. The book affectingly retells how Annie Sullivan taught the blind and deaf child Helen to communicate, a tale familiar from the play and film The Miracle Worker. Writer Yanagawa does not shy away from the darker aspects of the story, as when Helen attacks her baby sister, and follows the tale from Sullivan's breakthrough to Keller's subsequent triumphs in learning to speak and entering college, continuing to her two leading characters' deaths. Though occasionally heavy on the Hallmark sentiments, Yanagawa and Yagi capture Keller's inspiring tale with enough intelligence to make parents enjoy reading this book along with their children. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1569709769
• ISBN 13: 9781569709764
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 168