Book Review: Louis Braille - A Blind Boy Invents Braille July 24 2023
How can we stand firm in love and gratitude when misfortune descends upon us? Trust in the purposefulness of all that comes our way is a difficult skill to master! Louis Braille demonstrates to us a humbling answer to this challenging question and to mastering the demanding skill of trust.
This latest release from Waldorf Publications has us excited like never before. Louis Braille, a Blind Boy Invents Braille is another masterful telling of a story by Jakob Streit, made possible by the Streit Family Foundation in Switzerland and by Nina Kuettel, the fine translator.
This is a powerful and moving story of a little fellow who accidentally blinds himself with his father’s leather-making tools at age three and goes on to love the world and feel grateful for all he has. It is an instructive and humbling life story. The child never questions his fate but cheers all those around him to gladness with all that is possible, even with the challenges that come our way. He is like sunshine in the lives of others: warm and nourishing.
The boy grows to attend a school for the blind and makes reading possible for all his schoolmates there. As a youngster he comprehends a system he learns about from an army general who commands night operations and uses embossed dots to communicate with his men who cannot see in the dark. By adapting this system, young Louis develops a whole alphabet that allows him and all his mates in school to be able to read.
Young Louis Braille compromised his health doing this, staying up well past bedtime to figure out an effective system and to refine it to be maximally useful to those who cannot see. His compromised health led to an early death, but not before he gave the gift of reading to all.
The book is especially recommended for middle- and high-school students but holds moving promise for younger children in reading aloud—and for all of us in coping with the trials of life.
Best of all, the book is bound in a sturdy paper cover with the alphabet, as Louis Braille invented it (minus the extra characters of accented letters in French!), embossed on the back cover so all can experience deciphering the alphabet using the embossed dots.
This book will cheer all! Here’s a link to purchase it today!