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Recommended Reads: Braille in literature
Celebrate 200 years of braille with these titles about the famous tactile reading system!
Perkins Library is celebrating 200 years of braille! In 1821, while enrolled at the National Institute of Blind Youth in Paris, Louis Braille began work on a written form of communication for people who are blind. The system of raised dots would come to be named after him and would change the world. To mark this occasion, please enjoy this reading list which features fiction and non-fiction titles addressing not only the story of braille’s creation, but also its place in modern society, its impact on individual life stories, and stories of blindness in general.
Digital book (DB), braille (BR), and large print (LT) copies of these titles are available from Perkins Library or the Worcester Talking Book Library. Please contact Perkins Library to order any of these books.
Prepared by Chelsea Wood, Senior Reader Advisor, Perkins Library
Artificial Divide
by Robert Kingett and Randy Lacey
DBC 19240, available as BARD download
A collection of short stories by authors who are blind or visually impaired about central characters who are blind or visually impaired. They write in a variety of genres including fantasy, school stories, and crime.
Blindsided
by Priscilla Cummings
DB 71417, BR 18999, available as BARD download
Fourteen-year-old Natalie attends a boarding school for the blind to learn braille, cane use, and self-protection skills. After she and her roommate are attacked by drunks, Natalie must decide whether to retreat to her parents’ home or actively claim an independent life. Some violence. For grades 6-9. 2010.
Do You Dream in Color? Insights from a Girl without Sight
by Laurie Rubin
DB 75761, available as BARD download
Rubin, a blind mezzo-soprano opera singer born with perfect pitch and Leber’s Amaurosis—a disease that prevents the retina from developing—recounts her idyllic California childhood learning to read braille, use a cane, and ski and taking voice lessons. Highlights her struggles getting roles because of her disability. Young adult appeal. 2012.
How to Communicate: Poems
by John Lee Clark
DB 113879, BR 24891, available as BARD download
Formally restless and relentlessly instructive, How to Communicate is a dynamic journey through language, community, and the unfolding of an identity. Poet John Lee Clark pivots from inventive forms inspired by the braille slate to sensuous prose poems to pathbreaking translations from ASL and Protactile, a language built on touch. Amid the astonishing task of constructing a new canon, Clark reveals a radically commonplace life-the vagaries of family, grief, and small delights: visiting a museum, knitting, and, once, encountering a ghost in a gas station.
Louis Braille: A Touch of Genius
by C. Michael Mellor
DB 63350, BR 16790, available as BARD download
Biography of Louis Braille (1809-1852), a blind Frenchman who by age sixteen designed a code of raised dots enabling blind people to read and write easily. Discusses his schooling, his love of music, and the advantages of his tactile reading system. For junior and senior high and older readers. 2006.
Download Louis Braille, DB 63350
Download Louis Braille, BR 16790
More than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art
by Georgina Kleege
DB 93533, BR 22550, available as BARD download
Kleege critically examines the ways institutions make art accessible to blind people and the connection of visual arts with language. Uses personal experiences, scientific studies, and historical literary analysis to support her arguments. 2018.
A Picture Book of Louis Braille
by David A. Adler
DB 53405, BR 14002, available as BARD download
Presents the life of the nineteenth-century Frenchman who was accidentally blinded as a child. Louis Braille originated the raised dot system of reading and writing used throughout the world by visually impaired individuals. For grades K-3. 1997.
Privileged Hands: A Scientific Life
by Geerat J. Vermeij
DB 42911, BR 10669, available as BARD download
An esteemed evolutionary biologist and paleontologist, who has been blind since the age of four, describes his childhood and his career. Born in the Netherlands, Vermeij faced learning both a new language and contracted braille when he began third grade in the United States. But he brought with him a love of seashells, which became his life’s work.
Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille
by Jennifer Bryant
DB 86519, BR 21722, available as BARD download
A narrative biography of Louis Braille, who lost his sight as a young child while playing in his father’s workshop. After being exposed to coded military messages at the Royal School for the Blind in Paris, Louis invented his own alphabet—a system for writing using six dots. For grades K-3. 2016.
The Story of My Life
by Helen Keller
DB 55883, BR 14704, LT 5355, available as BARD download
The classic autobiography of an exceptional young woman and her companion, originally published in 1903, with 2003 commentary by editor Roger Shattuck. Helen Keller’s own account of her transformation is followed by her teacher Anne Sullivan’s record of their early years together and insights of Anne’s husband, John Macy. 1903.
Teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy: A Tribute by the Foster-Child of Her Mind
by Helen Keller
DB 59301, BRG 2885, available as BARD download
Helen Keller pays homage to Anne Sullivan Macy, her teacher, companion, and friend. Keller explains her own desire to remedy the public’s perceived lack of appreciation for the critical role played by the inventive, dedicated woman who helped her to communicate with the world. 1955.
Triumph Over Darkness: The Life of Louis Braille
by Lennard Bickel
DB 68015, BR 17820, available as BARD download
Biography of Frenchman Louis Braille (1809-1852), who perfected a raised-dot alphabet code named in his honor when he was only fifteen. Discusses the development of the system of reading and writing that opened the world of learning for blind people. 1988.
The Unseen Minority: A Social History of Blindness in America
by Frances A. Koestler
DB 37927, BR 19219, available as BARD download
Examines U.S. contributions toward improving the condition of blind individuals. Discusses the invention of braille and the origins of the talking book. Includes portraits of Louis Braille of France, Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan Macy, and Dorothy Eustis, as well as detailed accounts of mid-twentieth-century federal and state legislation.
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