The World at His Fingertips: A Story about Louis Braille Book

A biography of the nineteenth-century Frenchman, accidentally blinded as a child, who created the dot system of reading and writing that is now used by the blind throughout ...

Children's Literature

This 60-page book is the biography of Louis Braille. Born in France in 1809, Louis suffered an accident as a child, which eventually caused total blindness. Louis spent most of his childhood in a convent for blind children. He longed to be able to read books like other children, and as a young person began experimenting with a system for converting the written word into one in which sightless people could "read." He succeeded in perfecting the Braille system, although it was not readily accepted. He lived most of his life in the convent, trying to help other sightless youths. Eventually, he contracted tuberculosis, a common disease of the time, and died before reaching the age of 50. One in a series of "Creative Minds" biographies, it is accompanied by black-and-white illustrations.