"The act of reading is so easily taken for granted that we forget what an astounding feat it is."

Do you ever take being able to read for granted? What's amazing is how complex a task reading can be. I received a book in the mail from Penguin Books entitled Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read that explains how we learn to read. The book discusses the psychology and neuroscience behind reading and asks a fascinating question, "How, then, did our primate brain learn to read?"

The book provides some good hypotheses for how we learned to read. I was most interesting in a chapter called "The Dyslexic Brain" that summarized thirty years of research on dyslexia. A definition of dyslexia is given:

a disproportionate difficulty in learning to read that cannot be attributed to mental retardation, sensory deficit, or an underprivileged background....Current estimates indicate that from 5 to 17 percent of children in the United States suffer from dyslexia.

The section on "Overcoming Dyslexia" reminds parents that genetics is not a life sentence. "The brain is a 'plastic organ' which constantly changes and rebuilds itself...."

Overall, the book looks like a worthwhile read if you are in the special ed field, a learning disabilities specialist, teacher, or have a child with a reading disability. If you can wade through the biological explanations, you will definitely learn much about the evolving science of reading and how to improve the ability to read.