A review by medicore
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller by Sarah Miller

emotional hopeful informative fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I had read this book years ago when I was younger, and I am genuinely surprised that I had liked it. Rereading it now, I found Annie really annoying, with the way she treated Helen (being unnecessarily violent and upset with her one moment- most notably in Chapter 14- and then trying to get her to kiss her the next) and the way she acted as if Helen was constantly purposely trying to cause her misery when she was actually just a deaf-blind child negativing the world without the use of sight or hearing to communicate her feelings and testing boundaries. The challenges the two go through are more like annoyances that are brought up every once in a while to get “easily” solved later and a lot of scenes and plot points are mentioned once, but the story never goes deeper into the implications of how said events impact the character (mainly Annie's flashbacks). I like the later scenes in this book when Helen’s being all cute, but that’s it. I like the character of Helen and also her parents, but the other characters in this book are often only mentioned once or twice and then never again, as if they just cease to exist once they stop furthering the plot. I rate this book 2 out of 5 stars, because there were little bits that I did like, but the annoyances of the parts I didn’t were too high for me to rate the book any better. I wouldn’t really recommend this book to anyone, but I wouldn’t say I regret the read, because it was interesting to learn a bit more about Helen Keller’s childhood through this story.