I’m not sure if a dyslexic worldview is a thing or not? (Although I think it is.) But I’ve suddenly realised that there is a ‘dyslexic bookview’, and if a ‘dyslexic bookview’ didn’t exist it does now! This isn’t about reading, or genre, or style or anything like that, this is about how you view books as a concept. If you don’t understand dyslexia you’re going to have to hang with this for a minute or two.

A very good author, kindly gave me some very helpful feedback on a children’s book I’ve written. (And yes, I just ignored the advise on adverbs twice in one sentence!) Part of the feedback was on reading levels and age appropriateness, this is really important, and what they said was absolutely correct, and that’s what got me thinking.

I hadn’t realised this but my ‘dyslexic bookview’, splits books into two sections: books to read and books to hear. In children’s literature, there are books they read themselves, and there are books that are read to them. I think about how children get the book, not what book they get! Age appropriateness and reading level are really important for books children read, but for books they hear it isn’t. Young children are able to understand much more than you think!

To give an example, I was putting up a new light that had dangly bits hanging off it. My five year old, who may or may not remember all the letters of the alphabet and there phonic sounds, said he liked the chandelier, and later asked if it was “Louis 16th?” Where you may asked did such wisdom come from? The BFG (the Big Friendly Giant – just in case you don’t know), and more exactly the audiobook! He can’t read the book, nor will he be able to for years, but he can hear it, and he can understand it! They’ve been through the Chronicles of Narnia (all seven books not just the ‘The lion the witch and the wardrobe’), Rohl Dal, Beatrix Potter, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin, and a multitude more, all the books are beyond their reading level, but they know, love and understand the stories. Nearly all our longer car journeys are accompanied by children’s audio books, and I enjoying the stories just as much as them.

Being dyslexic means I think of books as being more than about reading, they’re also about hearing. Without realising I wrote a book for children, that anticipated children hearing the book just as much as them reading it! If you’ve ever seen a children’s film, most of it is for the children, but some of it is for the adults. I found “Despicable Me 3” hilarious, the kids really enjoyed it, but what I found hilarious they didn’t get. So in my book I’d added a few jokes that children wouldn’t get, they were for the parents that would be reading the book to their children. Because in my ‘dyslexic bookview’ grownups read or hear children’s books too!

I couldn’t read as a child, CDs hadn’t been invented, never mind the internet! Nobody read to me, and even simple books were beyond me. The best I got was Jackanory, and that was if you got to see it, we only had one TV in the house.

When you’ve dyslexia reading can be slow and laborious, there is no flow, no rhythm, no cadence to the words, it is a battle, a grind, it is a laying up for tomorrow, a gathering of stones from the field of your future, it is very important but it is not enjoyable. But hearing a book read aloud, that is a different thing, there is the lilt and flow, the expressions of joy or fear, excitement or panic. The bones of the words live as the breath of life is breathed into them. For me the book was for children, whether they read it or heard it!