The Reading Brain

It was my early training as a dyslexia expert that sparked my fascination with the brain. As neuroscience has grown, I’ve kept up with many aspects of the science of reading and how children become readers and confident book-lovers – and why they sometimes don’t. Reading for pleasure is not a “nice-to-have” – the evidence now is that has vast benefits. My mission is to help teachers and librarians bring those benefits to all children by sharing the evidence with policy-makers and senior management and by helping teachers and librarians share the evidence, too.

Articles on this topic

The reading brain

National Non-Fiction November and the School Library Association Awards

I write all sorts of books, fiction and “non”-fiction. 101 so far and another in the pipeline. They’re all very different, for different readers and

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Empathy from stories: true AND made-up #EmpathyDay

This is something I feel passionately about. It’s also something I know about, as the science of reading is one of my “things”. In fact,

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Screen-time vs reading to your child #TimeToRead

BookTrust released a new survey in Sept 2017, to coincide with the very good idea of #TimetoRead, finding that: “… UK mums and dads are

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Why schools (and families) shouldn’t ditch print

Digital devices have given us beautiful and flexible ways to read and enjoy text and illustrations. When ebooks first arrived, they were heralded as marking

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Why the WBD list IS a problem

(This article has been moved from my old website, where it was the most-viewed post of 2017, with well over 1000 unique visitors in the

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Empathy – non-fiction does it just as well as fiction!

Empathy From the age of around four, when most humans start to develop Theory of Mind (ToM), we learn that two people may not feel exactly the

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