Saturday, November 10, 2012

Engle, Margarita. The Wild Book.


Engle, Margarita.  The Wild Book.   Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt Brace     130p  $16.99      978-0-547-58131-6       elm/ms            E-BN       

When Fefa is diagnosed with word blindness (dyslexia), her mother decides that she will take care of the situation and assures Fefa that she will learn to read and write but that it will take a lot of patience.  Her mother gives Fefa a book empty of words and tells her that slowly she will begin to fill the book with words, just as a garden grows with flowers.

Fefa endures the mockery she encounters in school while at home her mother shows her how to slowly learn to recognize words and write them down in her special book.
 As time passes, Fefa writes words that intrigue her.  At first they are small words, and gradually she begins to continue adding words, words that have lots of letters and many syllables.  Slowly her book begins to fill up with the words she is learning to write and to read.  Then, one day, her meticulous way of learning her words saves the family from a possibly dangerous situation that she is able to figure out because of her careful observation of the written words of others.

This is a beautiful story told in poetry form.  The author brings to life a story told in her family in such a way that she creates a magical moment from a situation that must have been very trying, as her grandmother learned how to read after being diagnosed with what we know today as “dyslexia.     
  -- Magna Diaz    
Reading – Fiction, Dyslexia – Fiction                           

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