How Does Helen Keller Promote Ableism

I have chosen to read and write about the children’s book “Helens Big World: The Life of Helen Keller” written by Doreen Rappaport and illustrated by Matt Tavares. This book explicitly talks about disability and how the main character in the story, Helen Keller, persevered through her struggle of being deafblind. This story gives children who read this book insight on how there are people in the world different and the same as them that can be considered heroes. The story doesn’t explicitly promote ableism but there are some underlying details that might promote ableism.
Does the book promote ableism by ignoring people with disabilities? This book does not promote ableism by ignore people with disabilities. My reasoning behind this is the fact that the book is about Helen Keller who has this disability of being deafblind. On the second page of the story they explain how she developed an illness that led to her deaf blindness. The book explains the many ways that she learns to read, write, and communicate with her disability.
Do the illustrations promote ableism by addressing disability in stereotyped ways? As I was reading the story and looking at the photos, I noticed some stereotyped illustrations about deaf and blind people. For example, the illustrator tries to portray an image of blind people by making Helen’s eyes either …show more content…
As I mentioned before, it seem as though Helen is her disability because most of the story is how she learned and persevered as a person with disabilities. The text briefly talks about how people considered Helen an outsider. One example is when Helen went to perform in a movie about her life and the author wrote “Some people felt sad that Helen was performing. But she needed the money, and she felt good earning it” (Rappaport, 2012, p.29). This could also give the interpretation that disability is associated with being