We have identified some of our favorite books that you might find helpful. For each, we've provided a brief summary about the content. We know that there are many good books out there. If you have a book that you think would be helpful to others, please email your recommendation to us at dyslexiahelp@umich.edu
Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print - A Summary
Marilyn Jager Adams
Through focusing on a variety of research done on reading proficiency, Adams proposes that phonics and teaching-for-meaning no longer need to be two separate teaching approaches. This book provides an integrated treatment for the process of skillful reading, how it was acquired, and what this means for reading instruction.
Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills Activity Book
Suzanne Carreker & Judith R. Birsh
This book explains why multisensory teaching methods work in the classroom. Specific strategies are outlined to increase reading comprehension, phonological awareness, organization and study skills, and much more. Observation tools, assessment models, instructional materials, and activities are included.
Why Jane and John Couldn’t Read – and How They Learned: A New Look at Striving Readers
Rosalie Fink
Fink follows 66 striving readers and explains the common strategies that helped individuals become high-level, successful readers. This book employs is the interest-driven model, which is based on the reader’s abilities and strengths, as opposed to the deficit model.
Your Child's Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them
Jenifer Fox
Fox's strengths-based philosophy provides the tools to prepare kids for the future in a world that demands greater adaptability and creative thinking than ever before.
Once Upon An Accommodation: A Book About Learning Disabilities
Nina G.
This witty book helps people of every age understand the process of being diagnosed with LD, why accommodations are needed, and why advocacy is so important.
Writing Better: Effective Strategies for Teaching Students with Learning Difficulties
Steven Graham & Karen R. Harris
This book is a practical guidebook for teachers who wish to incorporate a detailed, systematic approach to help struggling writers in the classroom. These approaches are scientifically validated and practical for improving students’ work and views about writing.
Dogs for Dyslexia
Lillian Harris
This story, written by a nine-year-old girl for the Madison County Young Authors Conference, features a young girl with dyslexia who successfully navigates a school day with the help of her dog, Daisy.
A Mind at a Time
Mel Levine
Levine argues that children have different ways of learning and the current educational system fails to recognize and properly classify students. Levine has identified eight areas of learning based on his own research of children with learning and behavioral problems. He directs parents and teachers on how to teach students struggling in each of these areas.
Dyslexia Across Languages: Orthography and the Brain-Gene-Behavior Link
Peggy McCardle
This book details the science and research that has supplied the understandings of dyslexia in numerous languages and addresses the questions of similarity in dyslexia among those languages. The results of the research lays out a future for dyslexia findings, where "these specific next steps will pave the way for more and better research and encourage stronger interdisciplinary collaborations among fields, such as cognitive science, neuroscience, genetics, and education."
Academic Success Strategies for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities & ADHD
Esther H. Minskoff & David Allsopp
This book contains strategies that educational professionals can employ when working with older students with mild disabilities in the areas of reading, writing, math, and more. The approaches are one-on-one, which help educators evaluate each student’s individual needs. A five step model is included that helps instructors introduce the strategies to students and then helps the student use the techniques.
Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers
Louisa Cook Moats
Moats provides one of the most comprehensive, yet accessible, books on the underlying role of oral language in learning to read and spell. Chapters cover phonetics, phonology, semantics, morphology, syntax, and orthography. This is an essential book for every teacher's tool kit because as she says, "Literacy is the essential goal of schooling" and oral language undergirds literacy learning.
The Fluent Reader
Timothy Rasinski
This book focuses on interactive and fun ways to implement easy and effective reading strategies for children grades 1 through 8. The strategies are research-based and focus on the importance of word recognition, comprehension, and fluency. Some of the strategies Rasinski suggests are read aloud, repeated reading, and performance reading. This book earned many great reviews from users.
Nowhere to Hide: Why Kids with LD and ADHD Hate School and What We Can Do About It
Jerome J. Schultz
Dr. Schultz’s book outlines how stress inflicted by learning disabilities is a negative thing for children and how it impacts learning behavior. He uses his own experience and research to create a guide on how to reduce stress in LD students and provides strategies for success. The book includes charts to track progress.
Study Skills: A Landmark School Teaching Guide
Joan Sedita
This book is directed towards middle school and high school students who have trouble with organization. It is a tool for teachers to help students organize materials, time, and information from lecture and reading. The second addition shows the changes in Landmark curriculum caused by an increase in the author’s experience and training after consulting schools across the United States.
Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level
Sally Shaywitz
This book offers information on how the brain works, reading problems, and techniques to overcome these problems caused by dyslexia. Both parents and teachers will find this book to be a useful resource. Some of the sections of the book include a home program to improve reading, a list of the most common problem causing words, and much more.
Reversals: A Personal Account of Victory Over Dyslexia
Eileen M. Simpson
In this book Eileen Simpson shares firsthand accounts of what it was like to grow up as a child unable to read. Simpson, with her no nonsense creative delivery, vividly reconstructs her existence as a child living in the often frightening world of illiteracy limbo. Her powerful story of victory over dyslexia is honest, inspiring, and moving.
Dyslexia Wonders: Understanding the Daily Life of a Dyslexic from a Child’s Point of View
Jennifer Smith
Struggling through school, teased by peers, misunderstood by teachers and even family, Jennifer, at age 12, takes you on her journey to overcome the barriers of dyslexia. Parents, educators, and family members will benefit from the story of this remarkable young writer.
Teaching Learning Strategies and Study Skills To Students with Learning Disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorders, or Special Needs
Stephen S. Strichart & Charles T. Mangrum
The focus of this book is to turn students with learning disabilities into independent learners by using study skill and strategies effectively. Over 150 activities are available in this book that use active learning techniques and study skills practice. Each chapter contains suggestions for when to use the activities, assessment of mastery, and answer keys for each activity.
About Dyslexia: Unraveling the Myth
Priscilla L. Vail
About Dyslexia: Unraveling the Myth is a basic introductory tool to learn about dyslexia. It outlines each grade from elementary school through high school and what to expect from dyslexic students in each grade, especially when dyslexia is undiagnosed. The language is lucid, concise, and non-technical. Vail’s main focus is on the early years of school in identifying dyslexia and seeking out help. This book is a great tool for parents who want to learn more about how dyslexia affects their child.
Learning Styles: Food for Thought and 130 Practical Tips for Teachers K-4
Priscilla L. Vail
Learning Styles: Food for Thought and 130 Practical Tips for Teachers K-4 is a guide for teachers of kindergarten through fourth grade. First, it helps teaches identify a student’s learning style. The next section then addresses the learning styles and tells how to meet the needs of each style. Finally, Vail offers 130 fun and practical tips for teachers.
Words Fail Me: How Language Develops & What Happens When It Doesn't
Priscilla L. Vail
In Words Fail Me: How Language Develops & What Happens When It Doesn't, Vail describes how language develops in children. She then looks at what goes wrong during development and the effects it has on reading, writing, listening, and speaking. At the end of each chapter, Vail makes ten practical and specific suggestions to develop language, particularly a love for it. The book is a quick read and a good resource for parents and educators.
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
Maryanne Wolf
Maryanne Wolf sets the stage about the development of the reading brain from a cultural-historical perspective and then proceeds to biological and cognitive aspects. She then explores the puzzle of dyslexia. This is a must-read to help us understand how our brain evolved from 'reading' the hieroglyphics of years ago to understanding the sound-symbol correspondence used in the text of today, and then what happens when one can't learn to read.
