She's Doing Something Right
Before I start, let me say that I'm going to be using asterisks to name a couple of YA authors because I don't want to attract a bunch of teens and preteens to my adult content-oriented site. I also won't be mentioning their books by name, even the name of the book I'm particularly excited about, for the same reason.
So yesterday my ten-year-old daughter Jana finished reading the fourth and final book in a blockbuster paranormal YA series -- in case you haven't guessed it already, one of the movies based on this book premiered Friday. The book is 750 pages long, and she read it in less than a week. During a SCHOOL week. Admittedly, she was home sick with strep two of those days, but still, I think it's quite an accomplishment for a 10yo girl, especially one like her.
The thing is, Jana suffers from dyslexia, and as recently as a year ago, she hated reading. Well, she liked to read one particular series of very short books for younger kids (Junie--need I say more?) but once she finished those, she had no desire to read further. She hasn't been officially diagnosed with dyslexia -- the school tested her and said yes, she has many of the markers but it's not bad enough to require special ed -- but I know she's dyslexic. Despite the fact that she's very smart and a hardworking, straight-A student, she consistently scores well below the (very low) benchmark for reading proficiency for her grade level. Last week I was trying to help her understand what she's supposed to glean from newspaper articles she was assigned to read, and I told her to write down five words -- who, what, where, when and why, then figure out each for each article. Who was it about, what about them, etc. This is what she jotted down:
who
wath
wen
were
why
Seriously. She's in 5th grade and can't spell the basic interrogative pronouns. She still reverses her b's and d's, p's and q's (although she usually catches herself upon rereading), and she has incredible difficulty sounding out new words--when she first tries to sound them out, she often starts with the last letter. If that's not dyslexia, I don't know what is.
The other evidence supporting my position that Jana's dyslexic is that both of my siblings had learning disabilities in reading, and I know they're hereditary. My brother was diagnosed very early with mild dyslexia and got all the help he needed. He went on to become a college professor. My sister was less fortunate. She was diagnosed with ADD and unspecified learning disabilities in reading and math, but the diagnosis came way too late to help her. (They grew up in different homes -- my brother was given up for adoption to a financially well-off family and had a stay-at-home mom, while my sister and I grew up with a single mother who worked two jobs to keep us afloat.) The school didn't catch my sister's learning problems until 8th grade, and by then she was so frustrated with the whole scene that she wound up dropping out that same year. She's hardworking, funny, and has an excellent vocabulary, but though she later went back for her GED, to this day she can't spell or do simple addition to save her life. It limits her job options severely. And sadly, she's never read a single book for the simple enjoyment of it. She'd rather nail her thumb to the wall than read a magazine article, much less a book.
Jana has no problems with math, and since she's so good at compensating for her reading difficulties, she doesn't qualify for any kind of special assistance or accommodation from the school. It worries me that she's going to have a harder time getting into (and getting through) college, especially if she has no official diagnosis, but trust me, I'm going to be all over this until she graduates from high school.
But getting back to this 750-page book she just finished... Just this fall, she got hooked on another author (G*rd*n K*rman), who writes lots of short three- and four-book adventure series, and she's got a stack of 20+ books waiting to be read for school book reports. But when she found out that we couldn't go see THE MOVIE on the opening weekend, she decided to drop everything and read it. She couldn't stand waiting those few extra days to find out what happened to B, E & J, especially when some of her classmates might get to go see the movie over the weekend. And when Jana makes up her mind to do something, she damn well does it no matter how long it takes her.
If you'd asked her just two weeks ago if she'd ever voluntarily read a 750-page book, her answer would have been an emphatic NO WAY! But she was so invested in the characters in the movies, she just HAD to read the last book. Now she wishes she'd read them all. She won't read the earlier ones now because she already knows what happened -- the suspense is gone.
But she knows she CAN read a 750-page book, and she knows she can enjoy the hell out of it. She'll never again be too intimidated top read a book because it's long. I attribute this entirely to the author's eminently readable writing style. I read the whole series myself a couple of years ago, and read each book overnight because they just sucked me right along at a breakneck pace. My older kids (12 and 14), who both drive up the reading curve in their grades, have tried reading some of my favorite paranormal adult books (one of whose authors had some unflattering things to say about this author's writing), and they gave up after the first couple of chapters because the prose was dense and the plots moved too slowly for young minds. So "bigger" authors can diss this lady's writing all they want, but if she can write a 750-page book that both a dyslexic ten-year-old and her author mother can read and enjoy in less than a week, she's obviously doing something very right.
