Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

This book gave me the answers to a question I have been asking primary school teachers for a long time, namely "How does a child learn to read?" Maryanne Wolf has been involved in clinical psychology for a long time and has done much research to try to answer this question, including brain imaging. The information she gives is detailed and fascinating and includes contrasting the processes in the brain for reading an alphabetic, phonetic language and a more visual one such as Mandarin. She also compares what goes on in the brain of a dyslexic when reading with that of the more usual brain.
My own interest was aroused when my three year old daughter, seeking to copy her older brother, asked for a book she could read herself. I provided her with what seemed to be suitable materials, starting with a folded sheet of card with "Janet's Book" written on the outside and one short sentence and one picture inside. She got a new book of this type the next day with two sentences and this continued. Each day I wrote what she told me to write so she knew what the words were saying and long before she went to school she was reading real books.
Wolf's book is very readable and I would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject which must be almost anyone who can read.

I love language(s) and to read someone who has spent a working life studying how languages evolve, and work, for me, is facinating. Here we have a scientific explanation for something we all take for granted, every day and never stop to wonder at. Not to everyone's taste, but certainly mine.

good grief. i've picked up this book and put it down again, after only a few sentences (not even "pages", note) so many times, i've got RSI. i found the subject matter utterly fascinating, but the style is... well, i don't know what it is, to be honest. it's certainly unreadable. as another reviewer says, it's rushed as it is, but add to that the bizarre prose, and the result is a huge disappointment, as it starts with so much promise.

i'll persevere, because i want to learn about the subject, but please, someone, somewhere, give this undoubtedly knowledgeable woman a writing lesson.

Sometimes you literally stumble upon a book and think I'll give that a go. The title of this book was the first thing that attracted my attention and after reading the back cover I was intrigued.

Maryanne Wolf here provides an illuminating insight into the art of reading, with illustrations provided by Catherine Stoodley. This brilliant and fascinating book on the science of reading offers an insight into something that we daily do without any thought to how or why. As Wolf points out (and a lot of people do know) reading is not something that is hardwired into us, it is something that has to be acquired, that we are taught as children. Reading this review you would be amazed at how many and what parts of the brain is used. Reading uses a number of parts of the brain, depending on how advanced your reading skills are, and even what language you are reading in.

Wolf takes us on a journey through how writing and reading first developed, to how alphabets etc. evolved. She shows us how the way that we read changes as we get better at it and then she goes on to look at dyslexia and learning difficulties; what causes them and why they can occur.

For teachers and parents of dyslexic children, or those interested in reading and the written word, this book will make a great addition to your bookcase.

I bought two copies for my son by mistake and decided to start reading one of them. I found it so interesting that I kept it and my son had the other one. I thought at first it would be 'over my head' but it is very readable and hard to put down.

Mary Jenner