The Best Days of My Life: Childhood Stories of Famous People
Children's Books
An inspiring book about the childhoods of some of the famous people who have walked this earth and left an indelible imprint on our lives.
Overview
This book’s success can be measured by its being consistently reprinted several times a year, since it was first published in 2008. Written to answer a fundamental curiosity – what were great people like as children – it tells the stories of 25 iconic figures. The shy and sensitive boy, afraid of the dark, who became one of the greatest and most courageous leaders the world has known. The four-year-old who played a tune on the harmonium even when its keys were covered with a cloth, and later went on to be a musical genius. The prince who rescued and revived a dying swan from his hunter cousin’s arrow. The biggest takeaway from this book is: If all great people were children at some time, all children have it in them to be great!
A Glimpse Inside
Helen Keller (1880-1968)
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, activist and lecturer, who became a world- wide symbol for the disabled to overcome their physical handicaps and lead full and active lives. Born as a normal child, she became deaf and blind as a result of an illness at the age of nineteen months. This also affected the development of her speech, leaving her severely disabled. A remarkable teacher named Anne Sullivan helped Helen break through her isolation, and even become the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college. After completing her education, Helen Keller became a radical campaigner for workers' rights and spoke out against child labour and capital punishment. Her most inspiring book is ‘The Story of My Life’, but in addition to this, she wrote eleven other books, as well as articles on blindness, deafness, social issues and women's rights. She met several famous and distinguished people throughout her life, who admired her courage and determination. She received many honours, among them the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences in 1952, an honour by the Sorbonne in Paris in 1953, and the United States' highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.
The well-house stood in the garden at a small distance from the main house, and the path leading to it smelt strongly of honeysuckle – the flowering vine that covered the roof and sides of the well-house. As the deaf and blind girl walked, holding her teacher’s hand, along the path to the well, someone was drawing water from the well by a hand-pump.
Reaching the pump, the teacher drew her pupil’s hand and put it under the water-spout, letting the cool stream of the water flow over the girl’s hand.
At the same time, she took the girl’s other hand and by pressing her finger into the palm, she spelled the word ‘water’. Such a simple thing, but it unlocked a whole world of perception and understanding in her sensitive and intelligent student. This little girl, who had seemed to be so severely handicapped that she was beyond comprehending speech and language, went on to learn 30 new words that same afternoon. The teacher and her pupil had discovered a way to overcome what seemed insurmountable limitations.
This miraculous afternoon of 5th April, 1887 was the turning point of little Helen Keller’s relationship with her teacher Anne Sullivan. It represented the beginning of her triumph over disability that would spell hope for millions of people in times to come.
Helen Keller was the daughter of Captain Arthur Henley Keller and Kate Adams Keller. She was born on 27th June, 1880 in Tuscumbia, a small rural town in Northwest Alabama in America. At birth, she had complete sight and hearing. Helen’s father had been a Captain in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, but by the time of her birth, her parents were struggling to maintain their station. They lived in a house built by Helen’s grandfather, and Captain Keller worked at two jobs – that of a cotton farmer, and editor of a local paper called the ‘North Alabamian’.
Life for the small family would have still been tranquil if it had not been for Helen contracting an illness when she was eighteen months old. She survived this severe illness, which could have been scarlet fever, or meningitis, but was discovered to have lost her sight and hearing by her horrified parents.
Now began a period when little Helen turned into a terror and a tormentor, as she fought hard to come to terms with a soundless, sightless world. Looking wild and unkempt, and used to throwing things in her rage, Helen was a very difficult child whom many relatives regarded as being fit only to be put into an institution. Completely unable to communicate or comprehend anything her family was trying to tell her, Helen screamed and banged her head in frustration, snatched food from people’s plates, and refused to have her hair combed.
Selected passage from the book
