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    Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille
    Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille
    Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille
    Ebook72 pages37 minutes

    Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille

    By Russell Freedman and Kate Kiesler

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    About this ebook

    A biography of the 19th century Frenchman who developed Braille. The book spans Braille's life from childhood through his days at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth and into his final years, when the alphabet he invented was finally gaining acceptance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 20, 1999
    ISBN9780547346281
    Author

    Russell Freedman

    Russell Freedman (1929-2018) received the Newbery Medal for Lincoln: A Photobiography. He was the recipient of three Newbery Honors, a National Humanities Medal, the Sibert Medal, the Orbis Pictus Award, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, and was selected to give the 2006 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture. Mr. Freedman lived in New York City and traveled widely to research his books.

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      Book preview

      Out of Darkness - Russell Freedman

      Clarion Books

      a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint

      215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003

      Text copyright © 1997 by Russell Freedman

      Illustrations copyright © 1997 by Kate Kiesler

      The illustrations for this book were executed in pencil.

      All rights reserved.

      For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

      www.hmhco.com

      The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

      Freedman, Russell.

      Out of darkness : the story of Louis Braille / by Russell Freedman ;

      illustrated by Kate Kiesler.

      p. cm.

      Includes index.

      Summary: A biography of the nineteenth-century Frenchman who, having been blinded himself at the age of three, went on to develop a system of raised dots on paper that enabled blind people to read and write.

      ISBN 0-395-77516-7 PA ISBN 0-395-96888-7

      1. Braille, Louis, 1809–1852—Juvenile literature. 2. Blind teachers—France—Biography—Juvenile literature. 3. Braille—Juvenile literature. [I. Braille, Louis, 1809–1852. 2. Blind. 3. Teachers. 4. Physically handicapped. 5. Braille.]

      I. Kiesler, Kate, ill. II. Title.

      HVI624.B65F74 1997

      686.2'82'092—DC20

      [B] 95-52353

      CIP

      AC

      eISBN 978-0-547-34628-1

      v2.0214

      To Richard Billett

      FOR THE GIFT OF FRIENDSHIP

      Acknowledgments

      The author is grateful to Leslie Rosen, Director of Information, American Foundation for the Blind, for helpful suggestions and advice. Many thanks also to Pierre Cassagne, custodian of the Louis Braille Birthplace Municipal Museum, and to the hospitable people of Coupvray.

      [Image]

      The Dormitory

      The dormitory was dark and still. Only one boy was still awake. He sat on the edge of his bed at a far corner of the room, holding a writing board and a sheet of thick paper on his lap. Working slowly, deliberately, he punched tiny holes across the page with the sharp point of a stylus. Every so often, he paused and ran his fingers across the raised dots on the opposite side of the paper. Then he continued working with his stylus.

      He was interrupted by a husky whisper coming from the next bed. The same hushed conversation took place almost every night—the same questions, the same answers.

      Louis? That you? Still punching dots?

      Shh! Be quiet, Gabriel. It’s late. You’ll wake up everyone.

      You’d better quit and get some rest, Louis. The director will be furious if you doze off in class again.

      I know. I know. I’m almost finished now. Go back to sleep!

      Louis Braille placed his paper and stylus on a shelf behind his bed. Extending his arm before him, he walked across the dormitory and stood before an open window. He was a thin, handsome boy with the strong features of his French ancestors. Tangled blond hair fell across his forehead. His eyes, tinged with purple, stared blankly from above prominent cheekbones.

      Louis was a student at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. For months now, he had been punching combinations of dots into sheets of paper. He was trying to work out a system of reading and writing for all those who cannot see.

      As it was, blind people could not hope to read or write. The best method yet devised for them was almost useless. Isolated from much of human knowledge, unable to communicate by the written word, they could never share fully in life. It was a fact that

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