Louis Braille: Volume 133

Little People, BIG DREAMS Louis Braille explores the life of the remarkable man behind Braille, the tactile reading and writing system.

Little Louis was a curious child – always exploring and having adventures. Then one day, while playing in his father’s workshop, he had an accident with a tool and eventually lost sight in both eyes. It was tricky to get used to, but with help from his family and a local teacher, Louis continued to learn and explore. 

Aged ten, he moved to Paris to start at the Royal Institute for the Young Blind. Unfortunately, the school used a system that was very tricky, and didn’t allow pupils to write. Disappointed with alternatives, Louis began to develop his own system. When he shared his invention four years later, his teachers and classmates were amazed – his system used just six dots in a tiny space that fit under his fingertip, and included a complete alphabet, with punctuation marks, numbers and mathematical symbols.

It took many years for his system to be widely used, but little by little it spread across the world and came to be known as Braille. Today, Braille is used by more than six million people and there are codes for more than 133 languages. 

Little People, BIG DREAMS Louis Braille features:

Quirky and stylish illustrationsA biographical timeline, complete with historical photos and a detailed profile Recommendations for further reading

Little People, BIG DREAMS is the bestselling biography series for kids that explores the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, but each began life as a child with a dream. 

Author Biography

Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara, born in Barcelona, Spain, is a writer and creative director in constant search of new concepts for children’s books. In 2014, she created a book for her two twin nieces for their birthday, which shortly thereafter became the first book in the Little People, BIG DREAMS series. This multimillion-copy bestselling series of picture books explores the lives of outstanding people. From Mahatma Gandhi to Aretha Franklin, to Prince, Sánchez Vegara researches complex careers and makes them accessible to young children, with her unique and mindful style of writing. She works with a diverse team of illustrators to make each book lively, eye-catching and motivating. Working for more than fifteen years for clients in top advertising agencies, her books combine creativity with learning, aiming to establish a new and fresh relationship between children and pop culture. ​ Ana Albero was born in Alicante, Spain. She studied Visual Communication at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, and illustration at the University of the Arts Berlin. She is now based in Berlin, where she works primarily in graphite and colored pencil creating vibrant textured images inspired by old pictures and movies. She is the illustrator of Coco Chanel, David Bowie, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, David Hockney, Stan Lee and Louis Braille from the best-selling Little People, BIG DREAMS series.