Proust and the Squid

This book made me think hard about how I read and teach reading. I learned a lot about how the brain processes language, and how people with dyslexia process written language. It was very moving and I think about it all the time, even months after finishing it.

When researching my book, I consulted many books on literacy, but this is the one I liked the best.

Many books describe ways to improve reading and writing ability (especially for children), but this one goes beyond that and explains why we need to do them. The answers lie in the way the brain functions, and how it adapted to handle written language over the ages; in essence, how the brain learned to read and write. If we understand that, then the paths towards improving literacy (both child and adult), and addressing problems like dyslexia, become much clearer. 

Maryanne Wolf… show more.

Cognitive Neuroscientist and Developmental Psycholinguistic Maryanne Wolf’s trilogy is foundational to understanding how the brain reads, how to teach reading, and the impact that learning to read has on reorganizing the brain. In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Wolf lucidly explains: Because the brain has no “reading center,” each child must create literacy by adapting brain functions that evolved for other purposes. Wolf explains so lucidly what a reading brain is! Bravo! A real tour de force!