Helen Keller: A Determined Life Book

Summary-
Helen Keller, A Determined Life, is an advanced picture book for readers in grades 3-5. It is a scrapbook-style biography about Helen Keller's life. It tells about her childhood, how she lost her vision and hearing, her parents, her teacher, her many school experiences, her philanthropy and research work, her romance, and how she died. Every other page has paragraph structure print and the other page has real pictures, captions, maps, drawings, and quotes from Helen Keller. This book gives a lot of information about everything in Helen Keller's life.
Response-
I really enjoyed this book. I have always been interested in Helen Keller. When I was younger I even did a research project on her. I learned new facts in this book that I have never heard of before. This book did a wonderful job of giving information on everything about Helen Keller. I learned about her friends, pets, likes, dislikes, studies, accomplishments, and so much more. Anyone could pick this book up and learn a lot of information about her. Because of the layout, there is no prior knowledge needed. The scrapbook feel makes reading more interesting. There are a lot of visually stimulating images to keep a reader interested. I also LOVED seeing all of the real photos. There are a lot of them in this book, and most readers would be attracted to that.
I would be a little apprehensive about giving this book to someone who doesn't have strong concepts of print. Since there is so much going on within each page, I see how it could become confusing to some students. They may get frustrated with how to properly read everything in this book, or accidently skip some important information. On the other hand, the layout of this book may be appealing to other students. It has a fun feel, unlike traditional biographies. It would depend on the specific child.