Top 3 Must-Read Books For Your Dyslexia Journey

As parents and supporters of dyslexic kids, we're always looking for great resources. And today we're going to talk about our top three book recommendations for wherever you're at in your Dyslexia Journey.

Hey everyone, we're Nick and Sonja, and this is Dyslexia Journey, where we help you support the dyslexic kid in your life. And today we want to talk about our top three recommended books for whether you're at the very beginning of your journey with dyslexia in your family, or whether you're further along on the journey. All right, so the first book on our list today is called The Dyslexic Advantage by Brock Eide and Frenette Eide, who are both medical doctors and founders of the Dyslexic Advantage organization.

This is a book that I read a while back, actually, long before we started this, started Dyslexia Journey, and they recently released a revised edition, which I took another read through. So this book, there's a few things I like about it. First of all, is it really takes a strength-centered approach. So let me actually read a quote from the introduction to the book. They say, quote, Unlike most books on dyslexia, this book won't focus on making individuals with dyslexia into better readers.

Instead, it will focus on helping them to become better at being dyslexic. So the way this book is structured is that it first dives into the biological basis for dyslexia. And so it turns out that there are observable brain differences that lead to many strengths, as well as the more well-known difficulties with reading and writing. And so I'll just read one more quote from the book. They say, Dyslexia, or the dyslexic processing style, isn't just a barrier to learning how to read and spell.

It's a reflection of an entirely different pattern of brain organization and information processing. One that predisposes a person to important abilities, along with the well-known challenges. So after explaining the biological differences, the bulk of the book actually goes through different areas of strengths that are associated with dyslexia. And they divide it into four different areas. And I won't go into any more detail right now. We're actually going to be talking about some of the benefits of dyslexia and some of the strengths that are associated with it in future episodes of this show.

So look forward to that in the future. And in the meantime, I highly recommend picking up a copy of The Dyslexic Advantage. Okay, book number two is called High School Dropout to Harvard by John D. Rodriguez. And this is a very different feel from the other book that Nick was just talking about. This is actually written like kind of more a memoir autobiography kind of feel. And so a very personal style.

And it, you know, definitely has dyslexia as the main theme. But it's really kind of this autobiographical feel. But there's other anecdotes as well about his life. And so even though dyslexia is the main theme, there's definitely like those kind of things, too. So you get a feel for his life, which I really liked because I thought it was really putting, you know, a dyslexic person's life in context. So I liked even that there were some sections that didn't feel quite as directly related.

But definitely there's a lot of information about how he ended up, like the title says, like dropping out of high school. He was undiagnosed dyslexic at that time. And, you know, having some other careers and things and then ended up going first to Berkeley and then to Harvard. And so it's really interesting because he came to a lot of the kind of things we think about anyway, like in terms of strengths and what you need as accommodations, like on his own.

So it's really interesting to hear his take on it, both because you can see how essential they are. And they're just like something he sort of was eventually able to figure out on his own and how far they led him also. So it's like really encouraging to see what can be done when strengths are maximized and those accommodations are in there. One thing to keep in mind is, you know, I think that, you know, it's not necessarily our goal, of course, to to have our kids be necessarily in academic careers, for example.

That's sort of a side issue. I think it's just it makes the point, though, of like the fact that they can do it, like if that's something that is of interest to them, they could do it with the right balancing of their strengths and then the accommodation. So it's really inspiring in that way. And just another quick point about him. He also has an organization called Thinklexic. You can look it up online, and it is an organization that both celebrates the strengths of being dyslexic by having different art and technology offerings to students, dyslexic students, and also has teacher trainings.

And one more thing about this book that I appreciated before we move on to our third recommendation was that insider perspective, as you guess you might get from a autobiographical novel. But he really did a good job, I thought, of explaining the dyslexic experience. For example, in one place, he was speaking about the I don't even know what they're called exactly, but the machines that you can you can look so supposedly be looking at the world more like it is for someone, a dyslexic person.

And he was kind of describing how that sort of shows the challenges, but he tried to explain actually what it was like, more the sort of overall like viewing of the world, which he said it was missing, it was missing just sort of the context of what it of the richness almost of the world, I guess, and its visual connections. So that was really interesting, so our third and final book for today that we are recommending is called Dyslexia Land by Sherry Rae.

This is a really fantastic book for you to pick up, especially if you're kind of new to the Dyslexia Journey. It's a really accessible, easy to read, but comprehensive, really almost field guide aimed at parents and caregivers of children with dyslexia. And I have to say, after reading it, I really wish I had it, I'd had it like earlier on in my Dyslexia Journey, just partly because it is so comprehensive and includes, you know, so many aspects and age levels.

And it, it's, it's really supportive of parents, I think, and inspiring for being for ways we can be advocates and have hope and all of that, too. So also like the dyslexic advantage, it is somewhat strengths focused in that it, it definitely discusses dyslexia as a, just a brain difference, not as something to overcome. And it talks about the strengths and benefits as well as the, the difficulties that you're going to run into as, as someone with dyslexia or the parent or caregiver of someone just with dyslexia.

And also it provides really, really solid, practical advice about dealing with schools and the school system. Right. And we're really excited because we are going to be interviewing her soon. So you will get to hear a lot more from Sherry Rae soon. So those are our three top picks. Of course, there's lots of other wonderful books out there as well. But we'll put the information for these, the titles and the authors down in the description box.

We haven't done this for a while, have we? No. All right. Now we got it because we got stuff. We can go back and film the beginning again.