Proust and the Squid

"It’s a book about the neurocognition of reading by child development professor Maryanne Wolf. It’s about neuroscience, but it’s also about the history of communication and how we evolved as readers. Parts of it are pretty dense but parts are enormously rewarding. If you read this book, you will never hand your iPhone to your child again when you’re pushing the stroller. You will start talking to them and pointing out colours. If you understand what is happening in their little heads you understand that you can have a major role in their language and reading development. Neurocognitive scientists have built a consensus. They know that the way we naturally learn to read is the way reading was taught in the 1950s – sounding words out, understanding the sounds that letters make and how to blend those sounds through phonics. Phonics allies closely with how our brains learn to read. If your child is not getting phonics, it’s a problem. About a third of kids learn to read spontaneously, a third need some phonics instruction, and another third need systematic instruction. What third your kid falls in is not necessarily an indication of whether they’re smart or not. It’s just that some kids need a certain kind of instruction and unfortunately a lot of kids do not get it."