It was pretty tricky growing up with dyslexia, because I thought I was clever, and I know that sounds like a silly thing to say, but I didn’t think I was stupid. Yet I obviously was stupid because I couldn’t read or write. I seemed like a bright little girl but all that brightness could never come out because I couldn’t spell anything. So the cat always sat on the mat, it never did anything else, and the day was always sunny, it could be nothing else because I couldn’t spell anything else.
I got stuck on a reading scheme which I hope you guys never come across called Janet and John. Most people flew off it very early on but I got stuck on it for the rest of my time at primary school. I got as far as Janet and John Had a Ball from the age of six to 11. The most exciting thing that EVER happened to them was they got a dog, I almost had a party that day.
When I was at school nobody really knew what dyslexia was. They called it word blind. I always think not being able to spell is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a bit like seeing the iceberg and saying there is dyslexia – but it’s what’s underneath it that interests me a lot more than the boringness of spelling and reading and writing. Because before the first dictionary was written by Mr Samuel Johnson, we spelt rather imaginatively. Nobody was dyslexic, there wasn’t such a word. Some really famous writers from the past such as Chauncer and Shakespeare would have been in a special reading scheme as they hardly spelt the same word the same twice. A lot of Shakespeare’s work was written down for him. I’ve written a poem for Dyslexia Awareness Week (and the full poem is at the end of this article for you to read). One line is: “Words are our servants, we are not their slaves, it matters not how we spell them it matters what we say.” I do think that fact can be lost these days.
I don’t think of dyslexia as disability. It’s a gift. But if you are dyslexic I know school can feel a bit of a nightmare. The bad news is at the moment education doesn’t have enough diversity. We don’t necessarily value different ways of thinking and have decided to put a gold stamp on academic ability. We have not put a gold stamp on visual ability, which is a higher intelligence, or emotional intelligence. We’ve failed to see the gift in too many children. So while you’re at school you will probably feel stupid. You’ll battle and you’ll see all your friends succeeding, but I’d like to tell you that in days to come you’ll do a lot better. But maybe not at school.
I was sent to a school for maladjusted (which means behaviour problems) children which I eventually left. Then I was 14 went to a posh girls school, but the girls were absolutely horrid to me. I eventually learnt to read at 14 and my mother told me if I got five O levels (old fashioned version of GCSEs), I could go to art school. I just memorised everything. And did manage to get the five, even English literature. When I took that particular exam my English teacher told me write very quietly and not make any noise. She told me: “There are children here going to university and you’re not. So don’t disturbe them please.” So you can see she wasn’t a very supportive teacher.
I did go to art school and from almost the first day there I went from being a strange little girl with special needs and strange little girl to exceptional – and I rose once I was out of that awful system.
After art school I used to illustrate lots of books but now I paint with words – and I love my paintbox. I always write on a laptop and always visualise everything in my head first. If I can’t see the scene, go into the room, move the cups around, change the clothes, change the lighting. If I can’t do that I know I haven’t written it well and start all over again. To this day I’m embarrassed about someone seeing the level of my dyslexia so I don’t do writing workshops. I have days when I can read it but noone else can. And I have very good days when I show barely any sign of dyslexia at all. So that happens as well with dyslexia, that’s what makes it so tricky for people to understand. There’s so much more to learn!
So now I’m an author and to me dyslexia isn’t a disability. For years I was called the dyslexic writer and dreamed of the day that would stop and now it has. I’m a writer who happens to be dyslexic. So to dyslexic children reading this I say, stand up, stick your head up. It’s taken me years to be proud of having dyslexia. So if you have it, be brave. With dyslexia there is a gift. It’s a bit like getting a present from your Aunty. Everyone has a present and your friends discover: “Oh, I’m very good at maths” or “I’m very good at reading”. The dyslexic child has been given a present wrapped by someone who loves the sellotape and the brown paper a bit too much and they’ve stuck it down so hard so the poor kid is still pulling at the paper for years sometimes, way after everyone has opened theirs. I think dyslexia has amazing gifts to give, so don’t despair. Your gift is there.
I hope you enjoy this poem I have written which explains how I feel about dyslexia: Or you can listen to me performing it here.
Disobey Me, a poem by by Sally Gardner
They told me I was dyslexic
it didn’t describe me
belonged in the library
of words I can’t spell
no matter how many times they tell
you just try harder sound it out
simple when you think about
it. Stop giving me the third degree
don’t put me down
don’t make me fret
I can’t learn my alphabet
it doesn’t go in any logical order
the stress gives me attention deficit disorder
at school I wanted to go it alone
they told me that’s unwise
they called me unteacheable
I was unreachable
stuck in the classroom, broken by rules, by buttons and ties.
But I don’t like the little words they always disobey me
the does doses up and is higher than a dude should be
So they tested me
they corrected me
and found my results poor
and told me I wasn’t concentrating
they expected more.
I tried to get along
I never made the score
And I think about Chaucer in those freedom days
when no one found your spelling faulty for the extra Es and As
Mr Shakespeare I wonder would they let him write his plays?
Oh woe is me
might just be
graffti in a bog
And Hamlet the name
he called his prize-fighter dog
But I don’t like the little words they always disobey me
the doe doses dope and is higher than a do should be
You say that you’re a writer
but that’s absurd
how do you write
if you cannot spell the words?
listen, it’s not the way I spell
that makes me want to write
It’s the way I see the world
That makes me want to fight
I challenge you – see the words as I do
feel them sting your skin
the meaning often shocking
the way the nib goes in
to relish discombobulate not to moderate your passion
not to murder language in an artificial fashion
words are our servants
we are not their slaves
it matters not if we spell them wrong it matters what they say
But I don’t like the little words they always disobey me
the does doses dope and is higher than a dough should be.
From Everything is Spherical: An anthology of Dyslexic Writers.
Sally Gardner will be giving a talk about dyslexia and creativity with fellow author Tom McLaughlin as part of Dyslexia Awareness Week at the Bloomsbury Institute on Thursday 6 November 2014, there’s still time to get tickets here.
- Sally Gardner’s latest books are Tinder and Wings & Co: The Matchbox Mysteries, and both are available from the Guardian bookshop.
- You may also be interested to find out more about Barrington Stoke’s Picture Squirrel books which were inspired by the story of a young father who struggled to read his children’s picture books with them. The Picture Squirrels have dyslexia-friendly editing and layout to help overcome some of the particular challenges picture books can present for dyslexic readers due to their highly designed layouts.
Let us know your thoughts, comments and recommendations for reading with dyslexia by emailing childrens.books@theguardian.com or on Twitter @GdnChildrensBks and we’ll add them to this page.
Your comments
Michelle, on email: Tell me why all children’s books aren’t printed in dyslexia friendly typeface, such as no serifs, simple “a”s etc, and how this could be encouraged to happen. I just brought my 10-year-old daughter a Kindle where the font can be altered and her reading speed has increased x 4. This affects a lot of children.
Gaynor, on email: I love Sally’s article and poem on dyslexia - I agree that the focus of school is too narrow and doesn’t allow for differences in learning style (left brain vs right brain for example). My son is dyslexic and also very intelligent, he loves audio books and has an incredible memory. If he listens to a story on his iPod he can memorise the words and it’s then easier for him to recognise them when he is reading. I also don’t expect him to read every word in a sentence - he seems to manage better with the longer words and not so well with the little words, so he can ‘read’ the gist of it.
Olivia, on email: What a wonderful article which really gets to the heart of such a difficult issue for many children. I am looking forward to reading this to my son this afternoon - he struggles so much with his spelling that he constructs sentences around the words he knows. It is sad and so true that “the day is always sunny”. Congratulations on a brilliant piece and thank you - I have your quote now on my son’s wall. Words are our servants, beautiful.
Jennifer, on email: I grew up with dyslexia - my mother had right/left problems, but otherwise had 5 Masters degrees. I can’t tell left from right, early from late, or spell, and my dyslexia bleeds into numbers too, making dialling phones a pain. (can’t spell nuisance - I always replace tricky words with simple ones). I write books - have published over 25, including an award winning childrens novel “The Promise”, published by Double Dragon in Canada and a teen book called “Welcome to Paradise” published by Evernight press. My daughter is dyslexic. It runs in families. She had a terrible time in school, couldn’t read, was last in her class, but she worked hard. She saw a speech- language pathologist for several years. She graduated with honors, entered a tough prep school, and is in third year of college for languages. She is quite amazing. What we have learned about dyslexia is that our brains are not wired to be limited to exactness - we can imagine different ways of spelling, speaking, doing things. We need to discipline our brains but we can do that, we can slow down, concentrate, and learn to spell (after a fashion). I have a battered encyclopedia at the office that I consult for formal letters. I sometimes tutor children with dyslexia. I get good results, because I see things the same way, and I know that there is, as Sally Gardner put it so well “brilliance waiting to come out”. Dyslexia should not be a learning disability. With encouragement and reorganisation of schoolwork, dyslexic children do very well. One thing my daughter’s elementary school teachers did was reduce her schoolwork and homework by half, so she had time to finish her projects. Not every child can work twice as hard to get half the results and still not give up - that is where encouragement comes in. Encourage your dyslexic children by telling them how brilliant they are, and read aloud to them every day - ebooks are a terrific idea - and stick to the old-fashioned phonetic way of learning to read. If your dyslexic child is learning by the global method, it will never work. There should be no limits placed on dyslexic children. Telling them they cannot do something because of dyslexia is nonsense. We have to learn to concentrate and organize our thought-process, but it is doable. With early detection and a good speech pathologist there is every chance your child can finish top of his/her class - they learn to work hard for results - so reward their efforts and watch them shine.
@guardian @TheSallyGardner @GdnChildrensBks I despised Janet and John. I wanted adventure, but was doomed to be stuck with them for YEARS
— Gill Lewis (@gill_lewis) November 4, 2014
Kristen @curvedhouse on email, I am reading this article as I travel to the International Visual Literacy Conference in the US this week, where I’m talking about integrating visual literacy into core literacy learning programmes. It is for children whose stories resemble Sally Gardner’s that we need to think about how we can open books up to those who cannot access them through the text. Visual tools and visual literacy are a wonderful way to do this, and a very easy thing for teachers, parents and schools to adopt. Some kids just need a different ‘way in’ to books and once they are in, they have the potential to thrive like any other child. Sally is proof of this - it is such a shame noone could help her get there sooner. All the more words for her fans to devour! Thanks for a beautiful and uplifting article.