Many of you know that before I became an author, I worked as a pediatric neuropsychologist, diagnosing central nervous system disorders in children and young adults. While every case was different, one diagnosis was always a little more personal to me than others—dyslexia. As an avid reader, I can only think of a few things worse than having a difficult time reading. As a child, books were my escape, something I could carry with me to immediately transport me somewhere far, far away from where I actually was.
Dyslexia is one of the most common learning differences to exist in kids, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) report it has a prevalence rate of 20%, meaning it affects roughly 1 in 5 people. While is there’s no one single treatment that will change the underlying brain differences and “cure” dyslexia, thanks to the dedicated efforts of hard-working scientists and educators, there are now effective interventions that can help children become competent—and happy—readers.
Neurodivergent characters are finally starting to be better represented in YA fiction. When I decided to write a trilogy featuring a deadly, silver-blood assassin who wields fire with his bare hands, I already knew two things about this character (Sebastian):
- He would love to read
- He would have a history of dyslexia
While the specific rates vary, research consistently demonstrates that dyslexia is more likely to occur in boys than girls. Since this isn’t a scientific article, I’ll skip the jargon and just say this is due to a lot of reasons, a big one being that male brains mature differently than female brains and this difference in pacing appears to make them more vulnerable to neurodevelopmental factors.
We don’t learn about Sebastian’s dyslexia until the second book in my Felserpent Chronicles series, “Blood Divided.” Sebastian is working on recovering his memories of an ancient language (Shthornan), a language he spoke and read fluently at one time in a previous life. As he’s trying to refamiliarize himself with the letters of the Shthornan alphabet, it takes him back to a painful childhood memory:
I opened the thicker of the two books from LeBehr’s, and at the sight of so many unfamiliar words, my stomach tightened, instantly taking me back to being a child struggling to learn to read. In the dream I’d shared with Kyra, I’d broken my classmate’s arm after he teased me about my reading. I could still hear the boy stuttering in a cruelly accurate imitation of me, and I tightened my grasp around the book as the fire stirred in my veins. I’d eventually mastered reading and even come to love it, but it had taken years of focused practice on my part. I glanced from the book to the rune-covered papers before me. Perhaps this was a bad idea. I hated feeling dumb because I was unable to decipher marks on a page.
Fortunately, Sebastian’s Cypher, Batty, (his assigned life-long animal guide) is familiar with Shthornan and starts helping Sebastian remember it letter by letter. This scene was so important to me that I chose to have it featured in the character art you’ll receive when you preorder “Blood Divided” from Mysterious Galaxy (while supplies last!).
Every child deserves to love to read, and having a learning difference like dyslexia doesn’t make that impossible…it makes it harder, certainly, but with proper assessment, diagnosis, and intervention, reading can become possible and at some point, it might even become fun. I think back to all the patients I worked with who came into my office crying, feeling like a failure at school, embarrassed at how hard reading was for them. They often had such terrible anxiety about being called on to read out loud that they’d come up with excuses to get out of class for even just a few minutes.
Dyslexia isn’t a moral failing or short-coming and it has nothing to do with how hard someone is trying. It’s the result of how someone’s brain is wired, and you know what else we see in kids and teens with dyslexia? High levels of creativity. The ability to see something from a different angle. The capacity to think outside of the box. As a successful entrepreneur who established his own business and eventually became the most sought-after assassin in his entire realm, Sebastian is the epitome of creativity and perseverance (even if we can’t endorse his chosen career)…and thanks to those years of focused effort and practice, he overcame his dyslexia and now spends most of the money he makes on books.
May everyone diagnosed with dyslexia have their own such happy ending.