The Gift of Dyslexia

Why some of the brightest people can't read and how they can learn

Ronald D.Davis

Although this is not a new book (this second edition was revised and enlarged in 1997) it was highly recommended to me by a parent as a book well worth reviewing.

The author Ron Davis suffered as a child from the unfair treatment and humiliation familiar to many people with the ‘unique learning style’ called dyslexia. So Ron Davis, now a teacher, has written a first-person account of what the child with dyslexia encounters and how that child may be helped. For the first time the experience of being dyslexic is fully explained.

As well as considering the most frequently recognized characteristics including reading, spelling and writing delays and the reversals of symbols, other symptoms are included such as time and space confusion, disorganisation, and difficulty with comprehension.

However, the other side of dyslexia is explored and we understand how the world is seen in a different way and so other abilities can emerge. This means that tasks which require the ability to visualize something in a creative or different way are often understood in intuitively. This is almost certainly why so many inventors, scientists, athletes and creative individuals find that they also have dyslexic symptoms.

Ron Davis has developed a technique to improve a child’s reading and writing skills, and these procedures seem to have an excellent foundation in learning theory. Students see, touch, discuss and conceptualize the information they are learning. A strong multi-sensory approach provides the stimulation for important parts of the brain.

In the foreword Dr Joan Smith, who is Educational Director of the Melvin-Smith Learning Centers, says that Ron Davis has enriched our understanding of millions of individuals who experience the unique learning style known as dyslexia.

Ron Davis has done a good job here and I found the book hard to put down as I became engrossed in Davis’s explanations of the effects of disorientation, how trigger words cause problems and why, spelling problems, clumsiness, and much more.

© Jill Curtis 2002

 Souvenir Press      £12.99   ISBN 0285634127    $14.95  ISBN 039952293X  

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