You want to find a book that a child with a dyslexia reading style will want to read
Norman was sensitive, quiet, small, compact, kind and gentle. He was an anxious little boy in a class of 36 children, concentrating so hard when trying to read, unable to write. Today we would recognise the root of his difficulties, but then, though trained in psychology, no such insights were available to me as his teacher.
While his classmates enjoyed all the books they could seize upon, Norman was failing to read the boring, basal readers then recommended for children like him. Other boys and girls clamoured to read to the class the long and inventive stories they had spun from their imaginations. They wrote careful descriptive passages and shared them with us.
Norman watched in silence. When we tried to encourage him to tell us his thoughts as they came to him, he refused. I could sense his longing, his desire to stand up and read his own words. Norman wanted to write on the page and read what he had himself written. I lacked the knowledge to help him.
Then, on a day when we had listened to his classmates’ moving accounts of their experiences and everyone who needed to tell us about a significant moment in their life had shared their writing, one last hand went up unexpectedly.
Norman rose to his feet. He held his writing book out in front of him. For the first time he read his very own words to the class: “One day I seen a bird.”
For a breathless minute there was complete silence. Norman stood still, chewed his lip and stared down at his page. And then the cheering started. Norman broke into a smile and held out his book, turning round to show to all the other children that one simple sentence that meant so much. We applauded as hard and long as we dared while Norman grinned and then sat down.
If Norman went on from there straightway to devour texts and write long and structured stories I should have helped him to achieve something momentous, but that is not how it was. Learning for Norman continued to be a struggle. Books with large, sans serif type were supplied for “slow learners” and drivelled on in boring repetition about who had the ball and what colour the ball was. It was taken for granted by publishers that a child like Norman lacked intelligence and that interesting, challenging stories could not be for him. Books which told great tales or contained useful information were printed in dense, eight point, Times Roman.
Nevertheless, the moment marked a change for Norman and his confidence grew. He persevered and succeeded. His path to learning would have been so much easier if I had known then the facts about dyslexia that I have since discovered, and if books like No One Knows had been available. Today children with a dyslexic learning style have many more options to hand.
No one Knows challenges the child with its content and word-play while easing the reading task with its dyslexic friendly typeface, well spaced words and carefully selected leading.
Norman does not appear in this book but If your child needs a dyslexic friendly story to read, buy No One Knows for them now.
