Today I’m featuring a post in which poet and children’s book author Elizabeth Steinglass shares an insider’s view of how we can create books that help children with dyslexia experience reading success. Thank you, Elizabeth.
Light shines through the
crack under the door. It is well past bedtime. I peek in to find our son
reading. A tired child is no fun, but I am thrilled. I wipe away a few happy
tears and turn out the light with promises he can read more tomorrow.
Why the
tears? Because our son is dyslexic. Reading is hard work for him. That he
wants to read at bedtime is a huge accomplishment—for him, his reading tutor
and teachers, our favorite librarians and book sellers, and everyone else in
the children’s book world who makes the books he wants to read.
He’s come a long way from the day in
third grade when he came home, ran to his bed, pulled
the blankets over his head, and cried that he could never go back to school
because he was too “stupid.” Testing revealed that the reason he couldn’t do
what so many of his classmates seemed to do relatively easily wasn’t a lack of
intelligence but dyslexia.
In short, his brain is
not well suited to process phonemes—the smallest bits of sound in words. This makes it hard for him to
rhyme, alphabetize, spell, write, and decode unfamiliar words. Multi-sensory,
explicit reading instruction with a trained professional helped him
tremendously, but for him, and most other people with
dyslexia, reading will never be automatic, the way it is for other brains. It
will always require more attention, effort, and
time.
Thus, my deep joy every
time he decides it’s worth the effort to read. And often he does! As long as he
has the right books.
Below I describe the
types of nonfiction that have worked particularly well for him.
Nonfiction about Favorite
Topics
Our son is fanatical
about soccer and history. His interest makes him motivated to read about these
topics. His subject-area knowledge and vocabulary
also make help him comprehend what he’s reading. The more he reads books like World
Soccer Records and When on Earth? History as You’ve Never Seen It Before,
the more he knows, which makes it easier for him to read even more. Having these areas of expertise also gives him strengths he
feels good about.
Nonfiction Poetry
Like many people with dyslexia,
our son finds text crowding especially challenging. A page full of small print
with little white space can feel overwhelming before he’s even read the first
word. Books with fewer words and more white space are simply easier to tackle,
which makes poetry a great choice.
Anthologies like The Poetry of US,
edited by J. Patrick Lewis and Hop to It, edited by Sylvia Vardell and
Janet Wong (which I was honored to be a part of), present fascinating
information in a form that is engaging and digestible.
Poets Joyce Sidman,
Leslie Bulion, and Marilyn Singer have written many collections of nonfiction
poetry. Be sure to check out Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night,
Leaf Litter Critters, and Rutherford B., Who Was He?
Nonfiction Featuring Information
Presented Visually
Research into the
strengths associated with dyslexic brain wiring suggests that people with
dyslexia can be strong visual thinkers, thus their overrepresentation in fields
like art, design, engineering, architecture, and construction. So perhaps it’s
no surprise that our son loves books with information presented through maps,
diagrams, graphs, infographics, timelines, etc.
Many of these books fall
into the browsable nonfiction category, including Guinness World Records,
A Street Through Time by Steve Noon, It Can’t Be True: The Book of Incredible Visual Comparisons, and Animals by the Numbers: A Book of Animal
Infographics by Steve Jenkins. Our son pored over these books for hours,
gleaning every bit of information from them.
Nonfiction Graphic
Novels
The perfect example of a
book that presents information visually is of course a graphic novel. Graphic
novels seem like they were made for dyslexic readers (and I’m guessing many are
made by them). I doubt there is a graphic novel out there our son hasn’t read.
Some standouts include Drowned
City by Don Brown and Everything Awesome About Sharks and Other Underwater
Creatures by Mike Lowery. Please world, publish more, especially nonfiction
ones. And please, please make sure the print is big and clear. There is nothing
more frustrating than a graphic novel packed with tiny cursive.
Audiobooks
We all know how
important it is to read to young children, but there’s really no reason to stop
when they get older. Reading to a dyslexic child can turn an onerous task into
a moment of connection and an opportunity for rich discussion.
Audiobooks make books that would
simply require too much effort to read completely accessible to people with
dyslexia. And yes, it’s reading!
Our family road trips always include
an audiobook. As a result, books like Marley: A Dog Like No Other by
John Grogan, Port Chicago 50 by Steve Sheinkin, and Born a Crime
by Trevor Noah have become family favorites.
Other wonderful
nonfiction audiobooks for young readers include: Hidden Figures: Young
Readers Edition by Margot Lee Shetterly and The Beloved World of Sonia
Sotomayor by Sonia Sotomayor.
Our son is just one of
millions of children who have dyslexia. Some estimates suggest that 15 to 20
percent of the population may be dyslexic. Even if many of these kids don’t
love reading, they can still love books!
Elizabeth Steinglass is the author of Soccerverse:
Poems about Soccer (Wordsong, 2019). She and her husband, David, are the
parents of three sons with learning differences.
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One Response
What a great post! I've just started writing hi-lo (high-interest, lower reading level) nonfiction, and it's a challenge. This post shows how important hi-lo, graphic novels, verse, and many other alternative forms are. Thanks so much for your insight.