DEAR DR. BELL...YOUR FRIEND, HELEN KELLER

In 1886, six-year-old Helen Keller sat on Alexander Graham Bell's knee and played with his watch. Thus began a friendship that lasted until Bell's death in 1922, with Bell an enthusiastic supporter of all that Keller attempted. She dedicated The Story of My Life ``To Alexander Graham Bell, WHO has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies''; in later years, Bell even agreed to appear in a movie of Helen's life, though in the end he wasn't needed. Experienced author St. George has done considerable research into the correspondence and relationship between the two, as well as into their separate lives; in her narrative, Helen comes alive more effectively than Bell, who remains a somewhat distant icon. Helen's astonishing story is still poignant—a bright, impetuous, loving girl finding her way through the walls of blindness and deafness. Bell is portrayed as a somewhat pompous enigma, a compulsive inventor who wasn't particularly impressed with the telephone and who went to Nova Scotia to fly kites. Strange friends? De gustibus.... An interesting angle on both lives. Bibliography; 31 b&w photos not seen. (Nonfiction. 10+)