An entertaining explanation of the reading process, 28 Jun 2008
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, an expert on the reading brain, describes how our brains manage to read. Reading is not an innate activity, but it is an invention, and only a few thousand years old at that. It does not come naturally to humans in the way that walking or eating does and on the first page of this book, we learn that it is only because of the remarkable "plasticity" of our brains that we are able to achieve an understanding of the written word.

The book is divided into three parts. Firstly the history of how humans learned to read, secondly how reading is learned and how it develops, and thirdly what happens when in cases like dyslexia, something goes wrong in the "learning to read" process.

The reference to Proust in the title refers to passages from Proust's writings in which he describes the pleasure of reading, the memories that are evoked by thinking back to special books from childhood (how Proustian!), and the "reading sanctuary", that place of escape, a refuge from the world and its troubles. If Proust is a metaphor for a particular approach to reading, so the squid in the title refers to early neruo-scientific investigations of that creature which found how neurons fire and transmit to each other, adapting when things go wrong, repairing and compensating along the way. The squid analogy refers to the way reading required something new from existing structure of the brain, only possible because of the "plasticity" referred to earlier.

Wolf describes how reading actually changes us. We interact with books, both making them our own (everyone reads a text in their own way), but we are also permanently changed by them. "We bring our life experiences to the text, and the text changes our experience of life". Whenever we read, our original boundaries are challenged, teased and gradually placed somewhere new. An expanding sense of "other" changes who we are.

The section on the development of alphabets and reading systems is fascinating. Different types of brain activity are needed to read say Mandarin Chinese than are required for the Western alphabet. The style of writing shapes the culture to a degree, and certainly changes the reading experience. "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. The expert readers visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns and words". The eye moves ahead with a Western text, but moves leftward with a Hebrew text, gathering advance information about the text before it even reaches it.

The section on dyslexia was less interesting to me, but no doubt with be of great interest to educators and parents of dyslexic children. I am sure however that these chapters fit well into the book as a whole because they do actually illustrate what happens when for most of us, reading works flawlessly.

For those, like me, who are interested in "books about books", and the reading process Proust and the Squid would be an excellent addition to their library, a book to refer back to and to re-read. It is a little difficult to take in all the scientific material about brain processes, but there is much of immediate interest, the more complex neuro-science being available for study at a later time.

The mystery behind being able to read (or not) explained., 18 Apr 2008
Maryanne Wolf provides a fascinating insight into how we learn to read and the amazing things our brain does to make it happen. She also gives a comprehensive explanation of all the things that can go wrong. We expect our children to master in a couple of thousand days (from scratch as our brains aren't wired for reading at birth) what it took humanity several thousand years to develop. An important book for parents, teachers and anyone interested in one of humanities main achievements.

Literary, Historical, Biological, Cognitive, and Futurist Insights into Reading, Creativity, and Brain Development, 05 Oct 2007
I was attracted to this book by the title: What could Proust and a Squid have in common? As it turned out, squids make only two cameo appearances in the book on pages 5-6 and 226 (probably to justify the title in references to the early use of squids in neuroscience studies and for conjecture about passing along genetic traits that make survival more difficult), but Proust in pretty mainstream throughout the book as a resource and reference for describing the richness that reading can bring to individual experience.

Professor Wolf has written a multidisciplinary book that is mind-boggling in its breadth. You'll learn everything from how writing and alphabets developed to why Socrates disfavored reading to how mental processes vary among dyslexics who are reading different languages to the best ways for diagnosing and overcoming reading difficulties.

Yet unlike most multidisciplinary books, this one is very brief and compact. But that compactness is misleading; Proust and the Squid is a challenging book to read and contemplate. Only good readers with a lot of background in literature and neuroscience can probably grasp this book. What's more, there are vast numbers of references that you can pursue if you want to know more.

The writing style makes the book denser than it needed to be. Professor Wolf makes matters worse for lay readers by insisting on the correct scientific names throughout, when the ordinary names would have made the material easier to grasp. As a result, at times you'll feel like you are taking a course in disciplinary vocabulary. At other times, Professor Wolf engages in a penchant for long, abstract sentences: "What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principles characteristics of oral language." This sentence could be rewritten as "Most impressively, Sumerians developed a written language that made reading easier to learn by visually reproducing what was spoken." Obviously, her rendition is more creative . . . but I like mine better.

Here is what was new to me: Reading involves complex mental processes that are not natural to the brain's earliest functions. As a result, new neural connections need to be developed in the right order if someone is to be a good reader. Various brain scan tests have illuminated this finding and those neural pathways are well illustrated and described in this book. But there are different ways that those neural connections can be made, some of which will make reading difficult.

The book's strength is in providing you with a sense of how humans learned how to develop written language and read it rapidly . . . and gain greatly from reading. The book also is good in the area of making the case for those who can't read aren't deficient, rather than are different in ways that offer other potential advantages such as creativity. If someone in your family doesn't read well, you'll love that part of the message.

Where I thought the book was weakest was in worrying about the implications of highly condensed (and possibly inaccurate) online information substituting for traditional reading of books and articles. To me, it seemed like much ado about nothing. Human curiosity will always drive forward learning, something that Professor Wolf doesn't address. Provide that curiosity with more tools and resources, and more learning will take place. Here's an example. Today I was finishing my proofreading of my latest book. In the past, I had researchers diligently check each quotation for accuracy and source. Inevitably, there would be mistakes that weren't caught and made it into my books. By using the internet to crosscheck the sources this time, I was able to do the task much better and in less time . . . correcting many mistakes in the reference sources in my library. Having had this experience, I'll probably do more seeking of quotations directly from the internet in the future . . . and that will probably improve the quality of my quotations.

Bravo, Professor Wolf!

An entertaining explanation of the reading process, 28 Jun 2008
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, an expert on the reading brain, describes how our brains manage to read. Reading is not an innate activity, but it is an invention, and only a few thousand years old at that. It does not come naturally to humans in the way that walking or eating does and on the first page of this book, we learn that it is only because of the remarkable "plasticity" of our brains that we are able to achieve an understanding of the written word.

The book is divided into three parts. Firstly the history of how humans learned to read, secondly how reading is learned and how it develops, and thirdly what happens when in cases like dyslexia, something goes wrong in the "learning to read" process.

The reference to Proust in the title refers to passages from Proust's writings in which he describes the pleasure of reading, the memories that are evoked by thinking back to special books from childhood (how Proustian!), and the "reading sanctuary", that place of escape, a refuge from the world and its troubles. If Proust is a metaphor for a particular approach to reading, so the squid in the title refers to early neruo-scientific investigations of that creature which found how neurons fire and transmit to each other, adapting when things go wrong, repairing and compensating along the way. The squid analogy refers to the way reading required something new from existing structure of the brain, only possible because of the "plasticity" referred to earlier.

Wolf describes how reading actually changes us. We interact with books, both making them our own (everyone reads a text in their own way), but we are also permanently changed by them. "We bring our life experiences to the text, and the text changes our experience of life". Whenever we read, our original boundaries are challenged, teased and gradually placed somewhere new. An expanding sense of "other" changes who we are.

The section on the development of alphabets and reading systems is fascinating. Different types of brain activity are needed to read say Mandarin Chinese than are required for the Western alphabet. The style of writing shapes the culture to a degree, and certainly changes the reading experience. "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. The expert readers visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns and words". The eye moves ahead with a Western text, but moves leftward with a Hebrew text, gathering advance information about the text before it even reaches it.

The section on dyslexia was less interesting to me, but no doubt with be of great interest to educators and parents of dyslexic children. I am sure however that these chapters fit well into the book as a whole because they do actually illustrate what happens when for most of us, reading works flawlessly.

For those, like me, who are interested in "books about books", and the reading process Proust and the Squid would be an excellent addition to their library, a book to refer back to and to re-read. It is a little difficult to take in all the scientific material about brain processes, but there is much of immediate interest, the more complex neuro-science being available for study at a later time.

The mystery behind being able to read (or not) explained., 18 Apr 2008
Maryanne Wolf provides a fascinating insight into how we learn to read and the amazing things our brain does to make it happen. She also gives a comprehensive explanation of all the things that can go wrong. We expect our children to master in a couple of thousand days (from scratch as our brains aren't wired for reading at birth) what it took humanity several thousand years to develop. An important book for parents, teachers and anyone interested in one of humanities main achievements.

Literary, Historical, Biological, Cognitive, and Futurist Insights into Reading, Creativity, and Brain Development, 05 Oct 2007
I was attracted to this book by the title: What could Proust and a Squid have in common? As it turned out, squids make only two cameo appearances in the book on pages 5-6 and 226 (probably to justify the title in references to the early use of squids in neuroscience studies and for conjecture about passing along genetic traits that make survival more difficult), but Proust in pretty mainstream throughout the book as a resource and reference for describing the richness that reading can bring to individual experience.

Professor Wolf has written a multidisciplinary book that is mind-boggling in its breadth. You'll learn everything from how writing and alphabets developed to why Socrates disfavored reading to how mental processes vary among dyslexics who are reading different languages to the best ways for diagnosing and overcoming reading difficulties.

Yet unlike most multidisciplinary books, this one is very brief and compact. But that compactness is misleading; Proust and the Squid is a challenging book to read and contemplate. Only good readers with a lot of background in literature and neuroscience can probably grasp this book. What's more, there are vast numbers of references that you can pursue if you want to know more.

The writing style makes the book denser than it needed to be. Professor Wolf makes matters worse for lay readers by insisting on the correct scientific names throughout, when the ordinary names would have made the material easier to grasp. As a result, at times you'll feel like you are taking a course in disciplinary vocabulary. At other times, Professor Wolf engages in a penchant for long, abstract sentences: "What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principles characteristics of oral language." This sentence could be rewritten as "Most impressively, Sumerians developed a written language that made reading easier to learn by visually reproducing what was spoken." Obviously, her rendition is more creative . . . but I like mine better.

Here is what was new to me: Reading involves complex mental processes that are not natural to the brain's earliest functions. As a result, new neural connections need to be developed in the right order if someone is to be a good reader. Various brain scan tests have illuminated this finding and those neural pathways are well illustrated and described in this book. But there are different ways that those neural connections can be made, some of which will make reading difficult.

The book's strength is in providing you with a sense of how humans learned how to develop written language and read it rapidly . . . and gain greatly from reading. The book also is good in the area of making the case for those who can't read aren't deficient, rather than are different in ways that offer other potential advantages such as creativity. If someone in your family doesn't read well, you'll love that part of the message.

Where I thought the book was weakest was in worrying about the implications of highly condensed (and possibly inaccurate) online information substituting for traditional reading of books and articles. To me, it seemed like much ado about nothing. Human curiosity will always drive forward learning, something that Professor Wolf doesn't address. Provide that curiosity with more tools and resources, and more learning will take place. Here's an example. Today I was finishing my proofreading of my latest book. In the past, I had researchers diligently check each quotation for accuracy and source. Inevitably, there would be mistakes that weren't caught and made it into my books. By using the internet to crosscheck the sources this time, I was able to do the task much better and in less time . . . correcting many mistakes in the reference sources in my library. Having had this experience, I'll probably do more seeking of quotations directly from the internet in the future . . . and that will probably improve the quality of my quotations.

Bravo, Professor Wolf!

A Method the Works, 20 Oct 2008
I attended a training session for this programme through my local Dyslexia Action Group and was so impressed I bought the book immediately. You do not need the training session - this manual takes the parent/teacher through the programme in tiny manageable steps (hence the title). It really works and is aimed at any age pupil. The results are amazing and FAST.

I would recommend it to anyone!

Easy to use!, 07 Oct 2008
Toe by Toe: Highly Structured Multi-Sensory Reading Manual for Teachers and Parents

15 to 20 minutes a day, 5 or more days a week is the commitment you need to make, but it is well worth it. My daughter was struggling at the age of nine (with a reading age of seven) and in the bottom reading group at school. Two years later she is in the top reading group (is ahead of her chronological reading age) and has gained confidence.
I would recommend that you have some sort of rewards/incentives agreed with your child and that you follow the (very clear) instructions precisely.

Not for everyone but a good start, 29 Sep 2008
I have found this book a useful tool on this road but it is not the definative answer to anything. It may help with some reading skills but my daughter has been doing this in school and home for a long time and I cannot claim it is doing any good. I was warned by a dyslexia expert that it would be a useful tool but that it does not work for everyone but neither would it do any harm. Dyslexia is not about reading and writing but this book is a useful tool to help eleviate some symptons.

Still the best!, 07 Sep 2008
There hasn't been a review for a few years so I thought I'd emphasise that, despite the prevelance of new ways of helping dyslexics (cd roms, games etc) and, although these methods may have their benefits, nothing beats good old slog with Toe by Toe.

This book looks so offputting when you first open it - column after column of minutely differentiated words and acres of tick boxes BUT.... it works! Why?

Because dyslexic people NEED drip feeding day by day, little by little, rule by rule, until it gradually begins to make sense. Those of us lucky enough to just 'get' the rules of English don't realise what a fiendish language it can be. It's like if you find it hard to lose weight - the answer's easy but you have to keep doing it every day.

And despite my fears, both my kids actually enjoy using it. In fact the lack of bells and whistles helps concentrate their minds, and all those little ticks give them a daily sense of achievement.

Excellent results, 29 Jul 2008
We have used this with our seven year old daughter for a period of seven months. She has gone from bottom of the class to top third in that time. The results have been fantastic. She has changed from a shy 'hates reading' child to someone who cannot get enough to read. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It instructs you to follow the directions to the letter, which we did - spending perhaps 15-20 minutes a day with the book.

An entertaining explanation of the reading process, 28 Jun 2008
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, an expert on the reading brain, describes how our brains manage to read. Reading is not an innate activity, but it is an invention, and only a few thousand years old at that. It does not come naturally to humans in the way that walking or eating does and on the first page of this book, we learn that it is only because of the remarkable "plasticity" of our brains that we are able to achieve an understanding of the written word.

The book is divided into three parts. Firstly the history of how humans learned to read, secondly how reading is learned and how it develops, and thirdly what happens when in cases like dyslexia, something goes wrong in the "learning to read" process.

The reference to Proust in the title refers to passages from Proust's writings in which he describes the pleasure of reading, the memories that are evoked by thinking back to special books from childhood (how Proustian!), and the "reading sanctuary", that place of escape, a refuge from the world and its troubles. If Proust is a metaphor for a particular approach to reading, so the squid in the title refers to early neruo-scientific investigations of that creature which found how neurons fire and transmit to each other, adapting when things go wrong, repairing and compensating along the way. The squid analogy refers to the way reading required something new from existing structure of the brain, only possible because of the "plasticity" referred to earlier.

Wolf describes how reading actually changes us. We interact with books, both making them our own (everyone reads a text in their own way), but we are also permanently changed by them. "We bring our life experiences to the text, and the text changes our experience of life". Whenever we read, our original boundaries are challenged, teased and gradually placed somewhere new. An expanding sense of "other" changes who we are.

The section on the development of alphabets and reading systems is fascinating. Different types of brain activity are needed to read say Mandarin Chinese than are required for the Western alphabet. The style of writing shapes the culture to a degree, and certainly changes the reading experience. "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. The expert readers visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns and words". The eye moves ahead with a Western text, but moves leftward with a Hebrew text, gathering advance information about the text before it even reaches it.

The section on dyslexia was less interesting to me, but no doubt with be of great interest to educators and parents of dyslexic children. I am sure however that these chapters fit well into the book as a whole because they do actually illustrate what happens when for most of us, reading works flawlessly.

For those, like me, who are interested in "books about books", and the reading process Proust and the Squid would be an excellent addition to their library, a book to refer back to and to re-read. It is a little difficult to take in all the scientific material about brain processes, but there is much of immediate interest, the more complex neuro-science being available for study at a later time.

The mystery behind being able to read (or not) explained., 18 Apr 2008
Maryanne Wolf provides a fascinating insight into how we learn to read and the amazing things our brain does to make it happen. She also gives a comprehensive explanation of all the things that can go wrong. We expect our children to master in a couple of thousand days (from scratch as our brains aren't wired for reading at birth) what it took humanity several thousand years to develop. An important book for parents, teachers and anyone interested in one of humanities main achievements.

Literary, Historical, Biological, Cognitive, and Futurist Insights into Reading, Creativity, and Brain Development, 05 Oct 2007
I was attracted to this book by the title: What could Proust and a Squid have in common? As it turned out, squids make only two cameo appearances in the book on pages 5-6 and 226 (probably to justify the title in references to the early use of squids in neuroscience studies and for conjecture about passing along genetic traits that make survival more difficult), but Proust in pretty mainstream throughout the book as a resource and reference for describing the richness that reading can bring to individual experience.

Professor Wolf has written a multidisciplinary book that is mind-boggling in its breadth. You'll learn everything from how writing and alphabets developed to why Socrates disfavored reading to how mental processes vary among dyslexics who are reading different languages to the best ways for diagnosing and overcoming reading difficulties.

Yet unlike most multidisciplinary books, this one is very brief and compact. But that compactness is misleading; Proust and the Squid is a challenging book to read and contemplate. Only good readers with a lot of background in literature and neuroscience can probably grasp this book. What's more, there are vast numbers of references that you can pursue if you want to know more.

The writing style makes the book denser than it needed to be. Professor Wolf makes matters worse for lay readers by insisting on the correct scientific names throughout, when the ordinary names would have made the material easier to grasp. As a result, at times you'll feel like you are taking a course in disciplinary vocabulary. At other times, Professor Wolf engages in a penchant for long, abstract sentences: "What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principles characteristics of oral language." This sentence could be rewritten as "Most impressively, Sumerians developed a written language that made reading easier to learn by visually reproducing what was spoken." Obviously, her rendition is more creative . . . but I like mine better.

Here is what was new to me: Reading involves complex mental processes that are not natural to the brain's earliest functions. As a result, new neural connections need to be developed in the right order if someone is to be a good reader. Various brain scan tests have illuminated this finding and those neural pathways are well illustrated and described in this book. But there are different ways that those neural connections can be made, some of which will make reading difficult.

The book's strength is in providing you with a sense of how humans learned how to develop written language and read it rapidly . . . and gain greatly from reading. The book also is good in the area of making the case for those who can't read aren't deficient, rather than are different in ways that offer other potential advantages such as creativity. If someone in your family doesn't read well, you'll love that part of the message.

Where I thought the book was weakest was in worrying about the implications of highly condensed (and possibly inaccurate) online information substituting for traditional reading of books and articles. To me, it seemed like much ado about nothing. Human curiosity will always drive forward learning, something that Professor Wolf doesn't address. Provide that curiosity with more tools and resources, and more learning will take place. Here's an example. Today I was finishing my proofreading of my latest book. In the past, I had researchers diligently check each quotation for accuracy and source. Inevitably, there would be mistakes that weren't caught and made it into my books. By using the internet to crosscheck the sources this time, I was able to do the task much better and in less time . . . correcting many mistakes in the reference sources in my library. Having had this experience, I'll probably do more seeking of quotations directly from the internet in the future . . . and that will probably improve the quality of my quotations.

Bravo, Professor Wolf!

A Method the Works, 20 Oct 2008
I attended a training session for this programme through my local Dyslexia Action Group and was so impressed I bought the book immediately. You do not need the training session - this manual takes the parent/teacher through the programme in tiny manageable steps (hence the title). It really works and is aimed at any age pupil. The results are amazing and FAST.

I would recommend it to anyone!

Easy to use!, 07 Oct 2008
Toe by Toe: Highly Structured Multi-Sensory Reading Manual for Teachers and Parents

15 to 20 minutes a day, 5 or more days a week is the commitment you need to make, but it is well worth it. My daughter was struggling at the age of nine (with a reading age of seven) and in the bottom reading group at school. Two years later she is in the top reading group (is ahead of her chronological reading age) and has gained confidence.
I would recommend that you have some sort of rewards/incentives agreed with your child and that you follow the (very clear) instructions precisely.

Not for everyone but a good start, 29 Sep 2008
I have found this book a useful tool on this road but it is not the definative answer to anything. It may help with some reading skills but my daughter has been doing this in school and home for a long time and I cannot claim it is doing any good. I was warned by a dyslexia expert that it would be a useful tool but that it does not work for everyone but neither would it do any harm. Dyslexia is not about reading and writing but this book is a useful tool to help eleviate some symptons.

Still the best!, 07 Sep 2008
There hasn't been a review for a few years so I thought I'd emphasise that, despite the prevelance of new ways of helping dyslexics (cd roms, games etc) and, although these methods may have their benefits, nothing beats good old slog with Toe by Toe.

This book looks so offputting when you first open it - column after column of minutely differentiated words and acres of tick boxes BUT.... it works! Why?

Because dyslexic people NEED drip feeding day by day, little by little, rule by rule, until it gradually begins to make sense. Those of us lucky enough to just 'get' the rules of English don't realise what a fiendish language it can be. It's like if you find it hard to lose weight - the answer's easy but you have to keep doing it every day.

And despite my fears, both my kids actually enjoy using it. In fact the lack of bells and whistles helps concentrate their minds, and all those little ticks give them a daily sense of achievement.

Excellent results, 29 Jul 2008
We have used this with our seven year old daughter for a period of seven months. She has gone from bottom of the class to top third in that time. The results have been fantastic. She has changed from a shy 'hates reading' child to someone who cannot get enough to read. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It instructs you to follow the directions to the letter, which we did - spending perhaps 15-20 minutes a day with the book.

A great resource, 13 Nov 2008
It doesn't matter if your book club is starting or well established, everyone can get something out of this slim book.

It starts with an introduction by Lionel Shriver, a note from the editor and then a note from a book club member. Then it packs in about 100 books in detail and 14 top ten themes (British & American Classics; World classics; Quick Reads; Challenging Reads; Men's Books; Non-Fiction Books; Books with a Younger Persepective; Humourous Reads; War Books; Crime Books; Gay Reads; Cult Classics; Sci-Fi books and Chilling Reads).

In the detailed pages it has, the book length and year published; a non-spoilered synopsis; Reader and/or Critics opinions; Discussion points; Background info and Companion Books. The questions made me think for the ones I had read and some of them made me want to get my hands on those I haven't.

The range of choices is good, everything from Rebecca to Light a Penny Candle and it's arranged by author. The editors decided to limit themselves to one book per author but as a starting point it's an excellent resource!

The Book Club Bible, 09 Jul 2008
The book I didn't know I needed but now can't imagine how I managed without! For book clubs it is a must, for anyone who wishes to broaden their reading experience it is a fantastic place to begin. A brilliant stocking filler!

Finally! an easy way to pick your next book club book, 03 Jul 2008
I bought this book as it was such a clever idea. The reality is even better, giving you a taste of hundreds of books that you'd never realised that you wanted to read/ had forgotten about. Useful not just for bookclub members but anyone with a regular commute looking for something new to read. Highly recommended.

An entertaining explanation of the reading process, 28 Jun 2008
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, an expert on the reading brain, describes how our brains manage to read. Reading is not an innate activity, but it is an invention, and only a few thousand years old at that. It does not come naturally to humans in the way that walking or eating does and on the first page of this book, we learn that it is only because of the remarkable "plasticity" of our brains that we are able to achieve an understanding of the written word.

The book is divided into three parts. Firstly the history of how humans learned to read, secondly how reading is learned and how it develops, and thirdly what happens when in cases like dyslexia, something goes wrong in the "learning to read" process.

The reference to Proust in the title refers to passages from Proust's writings in which he describes the pleasure of reading, the memories that are evoked by thinking back to special books from childhood (how Proustian!), and the "reading sanctuary", that place of escape, a refuge from the world and its troubles. If Proust is a metaphor for a particular approach to reading, so the squid in the title refers to early neruo-scientific investigations of that creature which found how neurons fire and transmit to each other, adapting when things go wrong, repairing and compensating along the way. The squid analogy refers to the way reading required something new from existing structure of the brain, only possible because of the "plasticity" referred to earlier.

Wolf describes how reading actually changes us. We interact with books, both making them our own (everyone reads a text in their own way), but we are also permanently changed by them. "We bring our life experiences to the text, and the text changes our experience of life". Whenever we read, our original boundaries are challenged, teased and gradually placed somewhere new. An expanding sense of "other" changes who we are.

The section on the development of alphabets and reading systems is fascinating. Different types of brain activity are needed to read say Mandarin Chinese than are required for the Western alphabet. The style of writing shapes the culture to a degree, and certainly changes the reading experience. "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. The expert readers visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns and words". The eye moves ahead with a Western text, but moves leftward with a Hebrew text, gathering advance information about the text before it even reaches it.

The section on dyslexia was less interesting to me, but no doubt with be of great interest to educators and parents of dyslexic children. I am sure however that these chapters fit well into the book as a whole because they do actually illustrate what happens when for most of us, reading works flawlessly.

For those, like me, who are interested in "books about books", and the reading process Proust and the Squid would be an excellent addition to their library, a book to refer back to and to re-read. It is a little difficult to take in all the scientific material about brain processes, but there is much of immediate interest, the more complex neuro-science being available for study at a later time.

The mystery behind being able to read (or not) explained., 18 Apr 2008
Maryanne Wolf provides a fascinating insight into how we learn to read and the amazing things our brain does to make it happen. She also gives a comprehensive explanation of all the things that can go wrong. We expect our children to master in a couple of thousand days (from scratch as our brains aren't wired for reading at birth) what it took humanity several thousand years to develop. An important book for parents, teachers and anyone interested in one of humanities main achievements.

Literary, Historical, Biological, Cognitive, and Futurist Insights into Reading, Creativity, and Brain Development, 05 Oct 2007
I was attracted to this book by the title: What could Proust and a Squid have in common? As it turned out, squids make only two cameo appearances in the book on pages 5-6 and 226 (probably to justify the title in references to the early use of squids in neuroscience studies and for conjecture about passing along genetic traits that make survival more difficult), but Proust in pretty mainstream throughout the book as a resource and reference for describing the richness that reading can bring to individual experience.

Professor Wolf has written a multidisciplinary book that is mind-boggling in its breadth. You'll learn everything from how writing and alphabets developed to why Socrates disfavored reading to how mental processes vary among dyslexics who are reading different languages to the best ways for diagnosing and overcoming reading difficulties.

Yet unlike most multidisciplinary books, this one is very brief and compact. But that compactness is misleading; Proust and the Squid is a challenging book to read and contemplate. Only good readers with a lot of background in literature and neuroscience can probably grasp this book. What's more, there are vast numbers of references that you can pursue if you want to know more.

The writing style makes the book denser than it needed to be. Professor Wolf makes matters worse for lay readers by insisting on the correct scientific names throughout, when the ordinary names would have made the material easier to grasp. As a result, at times you'll feel like you are taking a course in disciplinary vocabulary. At other times, Professor Wolf engages in a penchant for long, abstract sentences: "What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principles characteristics of oral language." This sentence could be rewritten as "Most impressively, Sumerians developed a written language that made reading easier to learn by visually reproducing what was spoken." Obviously, her rendition is more creative . . . but I like mine better.

Here is what was new to me: Reading involves complex mental processes that are not natural to the brain's earliest functions. As a result, new neural connections need to be developed in the right order if someone is to be a good reader. Various brain scan tests have illuminated this finding and those neural pathways are well illustrated and described in this book. But there are different ways that those neural connections can be made, some of which will make reading difficult.

The book's strength is in providing you with a sense of how humans learned how to develop written language and read it rapidly . . . and gain greatly from reading. The book also is good in the area of making the case for those who can't read aren't deficient, rather than are different in ways that offer other potential advantages such as creativity. If someone in your family doesn't read well, you'll love that part of the message.

Where I thought the book was weakest was in worrying about the implications of highly condensed (and possibly inaccurate) online information substituting for traditional reading of books and articles. To me, it seemed like much ado about nothing. Human curiosity will always drive forward learning, something that Professor Wolf doesn't address. Provide that curiosity with more tools and resources, and more learning will take place. Here's an example. Today I was finishing my proofreading of my latest book. In the past, I had researchers diligently check each quotation for accuracy and source. Inevitably, there would be mistakes that weren't caught and made it into my books. By using the internet to crosscheck the sources this time, I was able to do the task much better and in less time . . . correcting many mistakes in the reference sources in my library. Having had this experience, I'll probably do more seeking of quotations directly from the internet in the future . . . and that will probably improve the quality of my quotations.

Bravo, Professor Wolf!

A Method the Works, 20 Oct 2008
I attended a training session for this programme through my local Dyslexia Action Group and was so impressed I bought the book immediately. You do not need the training session - this manual takes the parent/teacher through the programme in tiny manageable steps (hence the title). It really works and is aimed at any age pupil. The results are amazing and FAST.

I would recommend it to anyone!

Easy to use!, 07 Oct 2008
Toe by Toe: Highly Structured Multi-Sensory Reading Manual for Teachers and Parents

15 to 20 minutes a day, 5 or more days a week is the commitment you need to make, but it is well worth it. My daughter was struggling at the age of nine (with a reading age of seven) and in the bottom reading group at school. Two years later she is in the top reading group (is ahead of her chronological reading age) and has gained confidence.
I would recommend that you have some sort of rewards/incentives agreed with your child and that you follow the (very clear) instructions precisely.

Not for everyone but a good start, 29 Sep 2008
I have found this book a useful tool on this road but it is not the definative answer to anything. It may help with some reading skills but my daughter has been doing this in school and home for a long time and I cannot claim it is doing any good. I was warned by a dyslexia expert that it would be a useful tool but that it does not work for everyone but neither would it do any harm. Dyslexia is not about reading and writing but this book is a useful tool to help eleviate some symptons.

Still the best!, 07 Sep 2008
There hasn't been a review for a few years so I thought I'd emphasise that, despite the prevelance of new ways of helping dyslexics (cd roms, games etc) and, although these methods may have their benefits, nothing beats good old slog with Toe by Toe.

This book looks so offputting when you first open it - column after column of minutely differentiated words and acres of tick boxes BUT.... it works! Why?

Because dyslexic people NEED drip feeding day by day, little by little, rule by rule, until it gradually begins to make sense. Those of us lucky enough to just 'get' the rules of English don't realise what a fiendish language it can be. It's like if you find it hard to lose weight - the answer's easy but you have to keep doing it every day.

And despite my fears, both my kids actually enjoy using it. In fact the lack of bells and whistles helps concentrate their minds, and all those little ticks give them a daily sense of achievement.

Excellent results, 29 Jul 2008
We have used this with our seven year old daughter for a period of seven months. She has gone from bottom of the class to top third in that time. The results have been fantastic. She has changed from a shy 'hates reading' child to someone who cannot get enough to read. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It instructs you to follow the directions to the letter, which we did - spending perhaps 15-20 minutes a day with the book.

A great resource, 13 Nov 2008
It doesn't matter if your book club is starting or well established, everyone can get something out of this slim book.

It starts with an introduction by Lionel Shriver, a note from the editor and then a note from a book club member. Then it packs in about 100 books in detail and 14 top ten themes (British & American Classics; World classics; Quick Reads; Challenging Reads; Men's Books; Non-Fiction Books; Books with a Younger Persepective; Humourous Reads; War Books; Crime Books; Gay Reads; Cult Classics; Sci-Fi books and Chilling Reads).

In the detailed pages it has, the book length and year published; a non-spoilered synopsis; Reader and/or Critics opinions; Discussion points; Background info and Companion Books. The questions made me think for the ones I had read and some of them made me want to get my hands on those I haven't.

The range of choices is good, everything from Rebecca to Light a Penny Candle and it's arranged by author. The editors decided to limit themselves to one book per author but as a starting point it's an excellent resource!

The Book Club Bible, 09 Jul 2008
The book I didn't know I needed but now can't imagine how I managed without! For book clubs it is a must, for anyone who wishes to broaden their reading experience it is a fantastic place to begin. A brilliant stocking filler!

Finally! an easy way to pick your next book club book, 03 Jul 2008
I bought this book as it was such a clever idea. The reality is even better, giving you a taste of hundreds of books that you'd never realised that you wanted to read/ had forgotten about. Useful not just for bookclub members but anyone with a regular commute looking for something new to read. Highly recommended.

An entertaining explanation of the reading process, 28 Jun 2008
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, an expert on the reading brain, describes how our brains manage to read. Reading is not an innate activity, but it is an invention, and only a few thousand years old at that. It does not come naturally to humans in the way that walking or eating does and on the first page of this book, we learn that it is only because of the remarkable "plasticity" of our brains that we are able to achieve an understanding of the written word.

The book is divided into three parts. Firstly the history of how humans learned to read, secondly how reading is learned and how it develops, and thirdly what happens when in cases like dyslexia, something goes wrong in the "learning to read" process.

The reference to Proust in the title refers to passages from Proust's writings in which he describes the pleasure of reading, the memories that are evoked by thinking back to special books from childhood (how Proustian!), and the "reading sanctuary", that place of escape, a refuge from the world and its troubles. If Proust is a metaphor for a particular approach to reading, so the squid in the title refers to early neruo-scientific investigations of that creature which found how neurons fire and transmit to each other, adapting when things go wrong, repairing and compensating along the way. The squid analogy refers to the way reading required something new from existing structure of the brain, only possible because of the "plasticity" referred to earlier.

Wolf describes how reading actually changes us. We interact with books, both making them our own (everyone reads a text in their own way), but we are also permanently changed by them. "We bring our life experiences to the text, and the text changes our experience of life". Whenever we read, our original boundaries are challenged, teased and gradually placed somewhere new. An expanding sense of "other" changes who we are.

The section on the development of alphabets and reading systems is fascinating. Different types of brain activity are needed to read say Mandarin Chinese than are required for the Western alphabet. The style of writing shapes the culture to a degree, and certainly changes the reading experience. "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. The expert readers visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns and words". The eye moves ahead with a Western text, but moves leftward with a Hebrew text, gathering advance information about the text before it even reaches it.

The section on dyslexia was less interesting to me, but no doubt with be of great interest to educators and parents of dyslexic children. I am sure however that these chapters fit well into the book as a whole because they do actually illustrate what happens when for most of us, reading works flawlessly.

For those, like me, who are interested in "books about books", and the reading process Proust and the Squid would be an excellent addition to their library, a book to refer back to and to re-read. It is a little difficult to take in all the scientific material about brain processes, but there is much of immediate interest, the more complex neuro-science being available for study at a later time.

The mystery behind being able to read (or not) explained., 18 Apr 2008
Maryanne Wolf provides a fascinating insight into how we learn to read and the amazing things our brain does to make it happen. She also gives a comprehensive explanation of all the things that can go wrong. We expect our children to master in a couple of thousand days (from scratch as our brains aren't wired for reading at birth) what it took humanity several thousand years to develop. An important book for parents, teachers and anyone interested in one of humanities main achievements.

Literary, Historical, Biological, Cognitive, and Futurist Insights into Reading, Creativity, and Brain Development, 05 Oct 2007
I was attracted to this book by the title: What could Proust and a Squid have in common? As it turned out, squids make only two cameo appearances in the book on pages 5-6 and 226 (probably to justify the title in references to the early use of squids in neuroscience studies and for conjecture about passing along genetic traits that make survival more difficult), but Proust in pretty mainstream throughout the book as a resource and reference for describing the richness that reading can bring to individual experience.

Professor Wolf has written a multidisciplinary book that is mind-boggling in its breadth. You'll learn everything from how writing and alphabets developed to why Socrates disfavored reading to how mental processes vary among dyslexics who are reading different languages to the best ways for diagnosing and overcoming reading difficulties.

Yet unlike most multidisciplinary books, this one is very brief and compact. But that compactness is misleading; Proust and the Squid is a challenging book to read and contemplate. Only good readers with a lot of background in literature and neuroscience can probably grasp this book. What's more, there are vast numbers of references that you can pursue if you want to know more.

The writing style makes the book denser than it needed to be. Professor Wolf makes matters worse for lay readers by insisting on the correct scientific names throughout, when the ordinary names would have made the material easier to grasp. As a result, at times you'll feel like you are taking a course in disciplinary vocabulary. At other times, Professor Wolf engages in a penchant for long, abstract sentences: "What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principles characteristics of oral language." This sentence could be rewritten as "Most impressively, Sumerians developed a written language that made reading easier to learn by visually reproducing what was spoken." Obviously, her rendition is more creative . . . but I like mine better.

Here is what was new to me: Reading involves complex mental processes that are not natural to the brain's earliest functions. As a result, new neural connections need to be developed in the right order if someone is to be a good reader. Various brain scan tests have illuminated this finding and those neural pathways are well illustrated and described in this book. But there are different ways that those neural connections can be made, some of which will make reading difficult.

The book's strength is in providing you with a sense of how humans learned how to develop written language and read it rapidly . . . and gain greatly from reading. The book also is good in the area of making the case for those who can't read aren't deficient, rather than are different in ways that offer other potential advantages such as creativity. If someone in your family doesn't read well, you'll love that part of the message.

Where I thought the book was weakest was in worrying about the implications of highly condensed (and possibly inaccurate) online information substituting for traditional reading of books and articles. To me, it seemed like much ado about nothing. Human curiosity will always drive forward learning, something that Professor Wolf doesn't address. Provide that curiosity with more tools and resources, and more learning will take place. Here's an example. Today I was finishing my proofreading of my latest book. In the past, I had researchers diligently check each quotation for accuracy and source. Inevitably, there would be mistakes that weren't caught and made it into my books. By using the internet to crosscheck the sources this time, I was able to do the task much better and in less time . . . correcting many mistakes in the reference sources in my library. Having had this experience, I'll probably do more seeking of quotations directly from the internet in the future . . . and that will probably improve the quality of my quotations.

Bravo, Professor Wolf!

An entertaining explanation of the reading process, 28 Jun 2008
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, an expert on the reading brain, describes how our brains manage to read. Reading is not an innate activity, but it is an invention, and only a few thousand years old at that. It does not come naturally to humans in the way that walking or eating does and on the first page of this book, we learn that it is only because of the remarkable "plasticity" of our brains that we are able to achieve an understanding of the written word.

The book is divided into three parts. Firstly the history of how humans learned to read, secondly how reading is learned and how it develops, and thirdly what happens when in cases like dyslexia, something goes wrong in the "learning to read" process.

The reference to Proust in the title refers to passages from Proust's writings in which he describes the pleasure of reading, the memories that are evoked by thinking back to special books from childhood (how Proustian!), and the "reading sanctuary", that place of escape, a refuge from the world and its troubles. If Proust is a metaphor for a particular approach to reading, so the squid in the title refers to early neruo-scientific investigations of that creature which found how neurons fire and transmit to each other, adapting when things go wrong, repairing and compensating along the way. The squid analogy refers to the way reading required something new from existing structure of the brain, only possible because of the "plasticity" referred to earlier.

Wolf describes how reading actually changes us. We interact with books, both making them our own (everyone reads a text in their own way), but we are also permanently changed by them. "We bring our life experiences to the text, and the text changes our experience of life". Whenever we read, our original boundaries are challenged, teased and gradually placed somewhere new. An expanding sense of "other" changes who we are.

The section on the development of alphabets and reading systems is fascinating. Different types of brain activity are needed to read say Mandarin Chinese than are required for the Western alphabet. The style of writing shapes the culture to a degree, and certainly changes the reading experience. "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. The expert readers visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns and words". The eye moves ahead with a Western text, but moves leftward with a Hebrew text, gathering advance information about the text before it even reaches it.

The section on dyslexia was less interesting to me, but no doubt with be of great interest to educators and parents of dyslexic children. I am sure however that these chapters fit well into the book as a whole because they do actually illustrate what happens when for most of us, reading works flawlessly.

For those, like me, who are interested in "books about books", and the reading process Proust and the Squid would be an excellent addition to their library, a book to refer back to and to re-read. It is a little difficult to take in all the scientific material about brain processes, but there is much of immediate interest, the more complex neuro-science being available for study at a later time.

The mystery behind being able to read (or not) explained., 18 Apr 2008
Maryanne Wolf provides a fascinating insight into how we learn to read and the amazing things our brain does to make it happen. She also gives a comprehensive explanation of all the things that can go wrong. We expect our children to master in a couple of thousand days (from scratch as our brains aren't wired for reading at birth) what it took humanity several thousand years to develop. An important book for parents, teachers and anyone interested in one of humanities main achievements.

Literary, Historical, Biological, Cognitive, and Futurist Insights into Reading, Creativity, and Brain Development, 05 Oct 2007
I was attracted to this book by the title: What could Proust and a Squid have in common? As it turned out, squids make only two cameo appearances in the book on pages 5-6 and 226 (probably to justify the title in references to the early use of squids in neuroscience studies and for conjecture about passing along genetic traits that make survival more difficult), but Proust in pretty mainstream throughout the book as a resource and reference for describing the richness that reading can bring to individual experience.

Professor Wolf has written a multidisciplinary book that is mind-boggling in its breadth. You'll learn everything from how writing and alphabets developed to why Socrates disfavored reading to how mental processes vary among dyslexics who are reading different languages to the best ways for diagnosing and overcoming reading difficulties.

Yet unlike most multidisciplinary books, this one is very brief and compact. But that compactness is misleading; Proust and the Squid is a challenging book to read and contemplate. Only good readers with a lot of background in literature and neuroscience can probably grasp this book. What's more, there are vast numbers of references that you can pursue if you want to know more.

The writing style makes the book denser than it needed to be. Professor Wolf makes matters worse for lay readers by insisting on the correct scientific names throughout, when the ordinary names would have made the material easier to grasp. As a result, at times you'll feel like you are taking a course in disciplinary vocabulary. At other times, Professor Wolf engages in a penchant for long, abstract sentences: "What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principles characteristics of oral language." This sentence could be rewritten as "Most impressively, Sumerians developed a written language that made reading easier to learn by visually reproducing what was spoken." Obviously, her rendition is more creative . . . but I like mine better.

Here is what was new to me: Reading involves complex mental processes that are not natural to the brain's earliest functions. As a result, new neural connections need to be developed in the right order if someone is to be a good reader. Various brain scan tests have illuminated this finding and those neural pathways are well illustrated and described in this book. But there are different ways that those neural connections can be made, some of which will make reading difficult.

The book's strength is in providing you with a sense of how humans learned how to develop written language and read it rapidly . . . and gain greatly from reading. The book also is good in the area of making the case for those who can't read aren't deficient, rather than are different in ways that offer other potential advantages such as creativity. If someone in your family doesn't read well, you'll love that part of the message.

Where I thought the book was weakest was in worrying about the implications of highly condensed (and possibly inaccurate) online information substituting for traditional reading of books and articles. To me, it seemed like much ado about nothing. Human curiosity will always drive forward learning, something that Professor Wolf doesn't address. Provide that curiosity with more tools and resources, and more learning will take place. Here's an example. Today I was finishing my proofreading of my latest book. In the past, I had researchers diligently check each quotation for accuracy and source. Inevitably, there would be mistakes that weren't caught and made it into my books. By using the internet to crosscheck the sources this time, I was able to do the task much better and in less time . . . correcting many mistakes in the reference sources in my library. Having had this experience, I'll probably do more seeking of quotations directly from the internet in the future . . . and that will probably improve the quality of my quotations.

Bravo, Professor Wolf!

A Method the Works, 20 Oct 2008
I attended a training session for this programme through my local Dyslexia Action Group and was so impressed I bought the book immediately. You do not need the training session - this manual takes the parent/teacher through the programme in tiny manageable steps (hence the title). It really works and is aimed at any age pupil. The results are amazing and FAST.

I would recommend it to anyone!

Easy to use!, 07 Oct 2008
Toe by Toe: Highly Structured Multi-Sensory Reading Manual for Teachers and Parents

15 to 20 minutes a day, 5 or more days a week is the commitment you need to make, but it is well worth it. My daughter was struggling at the age of nine (with a reading age of seven) and in the bottom reading group at school. Two years later she is in the top reading group (is ahead of her chronological reading age) and has gained confidence.
I would recommend that you have some sort of rewards/incentives agreed with your child and that you follow the (very clear) instructions precisely.

Not for everyone but a good start, 29 Sep 2008
I have found this book a useful tool on this road but it is not the definative answer to anything. It may help with some reading skills but my daughter has been doing this in school and home for a long time and I cannot claim it is doing any good. I was warned by a dyslexia expert that it would be a useful tool but that it does not work for everyone but neither would it do any harm. Dyslexia is not about reading and writing but this book is a useful tool to help eleviate some symptons.

Still the best!, 07 Sep 2008
There hasn't been a review for a few years so I thought I'd emphasise that, despite the prevelance of new ways of helping dyslexics (cd roms, games etc) and, although these methods may have their benefits, nothing beats good old slog with Toe by Toe.

This book looks so offputting when you first open it - column after column of minutely differentiated words and acres of tick boxes BUT.... it works! Why?

Because dyslexic people NEED drip feeding day by day, little by little, rule by rule, until it gradually begins to make sense. Those of us lucky enough to just 'get' the rules of English don't realise what a fiendish language it can be. It's like if you find it hard to lose weight - the answer's easy but you have to keep doing it every day.

And despite my fears, both my kids actually enjoy using it. In fact the lack of bells and whistles helps concentrate their minds, and all those little ticks give them a daily sense of achievement.

Excellent results, 29 Jul 2008
We have used this with our seven year old daughter for a period of seven months. She has gone from bottom of the class to top third in that time. The results have been fantastic. She has changed from a shy 'hates reading' child to someone who cannot get enough to read. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It instructs you to follow the directions to the letter, which we did - spending perhaps 15-20 minutes a day with the book.

A great resource, 13 Nov 2008
It doesn't matter if your book club is starting or well established, everyone can get something out of this slim book.

It starts with an introduction by Lionel Shriver, a note from the editor and then a note from a book club member. Then it packs in about 100 books in detail and 14 top ten themes (British & American Classics; World classics; Quick Reads; Challenging Reads; Men's Books; Non-Fiction Books; Books with a Younger Persepective; Humourous Reads; War Books; Crime Books; Gay Reads; Cult Classics; Sci-Fi books and Chilling Reads).

In the detailed pages it has, the book length and year published; a non-spoilered synopsis; Reader and/or Critics opinions; Discussion points; Background info and Companion Books. The questions made me think for the ones I had read and some of them made me want to get my hands on those I haven't.

The range of choices is good, everything from Rebecca to Light a Penny Candle and it's arranged by author. The editors decided to limit themselves to one book per author but as a starting point it's an excellent resource!

The Book Club Bible, 09 Jul 2008
The book I didn't know I needed but now can't imagine how I managed without! For book clubs it is a must, for anyone who wishes to broaden their reading experience it is a fantastic place to begin. A brilliant stocking filler!

Finally! an easy way to pick your next book club book, 03 Jul 2008
I bought this book as it was such a clever idea. The reality is even better, giving you a taste of hundreds of books that you'd never realised that you wanted to read/ had forgotten about. Useful not just for bookclub members but anyone with a regular commute looking for something new to read. Highly recommended.

An entertaining explanation of the reading process, 28 Jun 2008
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, an expert on the reading brain, describes how our brains manage to read. Reading is not an innate activity, but it is an invention, and only a few thousand years old at that. It does not come naturally to humans in the way that walking or eating does and on the first page of this book, we learn that it is only because of the remarkable "plasticity" of our brains that we are able to achieve an understanding of the written word.

The book is divided into three parts. Firstly the history of how humans learned to read, secondly how reading is learned and how it develops, and thirdly what happens when in cases like dyslexia, something goes wrong in the "learning to read" process.

The reference to Proust in the title refers to passages from Proust's writings in which he describes the pleasure of reading, the memories that are evoked by thinking back to special books from childhood (how Proustian!), and the "reading sanctuary", that place of escape, a refuge from the world and its troubles. If Proust is a metaphor for a particular approach to reading, so the squid in the title refers to early neruo-scientific investigations of that creature which found how neurons fire and transmit to each other, adapting when things go wrong, repairing and compensating along the way. The squid analogy refers to the way reading required something new from existing structure of the brain, only possible because of the "plasticity" referred to earlier.

Wolf describes how reading actually changes us. We interact with books, both making them our own (everyone reads a text in their own way), but we are also permanently changed by them. "We bring our life experiences to the text, and the text changes our experience of life". Whenever we read, our original boundaries are challenged, teased and gradually placed somewhere new. An expanding sense of "other" changes who we are.

The section on the development of alphabets and reading systems is fascinating. Different types of brain activity are needed to read say Mandarin Chinese than are required for the Western alphabet. The style of writing shapes the culture to a degree, and certainly changes the reading experience. "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. The expert readers visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns and words". The eye moves ahead with a Western text, but moves leftward with a Hebrew text, gathering advance information about the text before it even reaches it.

The section on dyslexia was less interesting to me, but no doubt with be of great interest to educators and parents of dyslexic children. I am sure however that these chapters fit well into the book as a whole because they do actually illustrate what happens when for most of us, reading works flawlessly.

For those, like me, who are interested in "books about books", and the reading process Proust and the Squid would be an excellent addition to their library, a book to refer back to and to re-read. It is a little difficult to take in all the scientific material about brain processes, but there is much of immediate interest, the more complex neuro-science being available for study at a later time.

The mystery behind being able to read (or not) explained., 18 Apr 2008
Maryanne Wolf provides a fascinating insight into how we learn to read and the amazing things our brain does to make it happen. She also gives a comprehensive explanation of all the things that can go wrong. We expect our children to master in a couple of thousand days (from scratch as our brains aren't wired for reading at birth) what it took humanity several thousand years to develop. An important book for parents, teachers and anyone interested in one of humanities main achievements.

Literary, Historical, Biological, Cognitive, and Futurist Insights into Reading, Creativity, and Brain Development, 05 Oct 2007
I was attracted to this book by the title: What could Proust and a Squid have in common? As it turned out, squids make only two cameo appearances in the book on pages 5-6 and 226 (probably to justify the title in references to the early use of squids in neuroscience studies and for conjecture about passing along genetic traits that make survival more difficult), but Proust in pretty mainstream throughout the book as a resource and reference for describing the richness that reading can bring to individual experience.

Professor Wolf has written a multidisciplinary book that is mind-boggling in its breadth. You'll learn everything from how writing and alphabets developed to why Socrates disfavored reading to how mental processes vary among dyslexics who are reading different languages to the best ways for diagnosing and overcoming reading difficulties.

Yet unlike most multidisciplinary books, this one is very brief and compact. But that compactness is misleading; Proust and the Squid is a challenging book to read and contemplate. Only good readers with a lot of background in literature and neuroscience can probably grasp this book. What's more, there are vast numbers of references that you can pursue if you want to know more.

The writing style makes the book denser than it needed to be. Professor Wolf makes matters worse for lay readers by insisting on the correct scientific names throughout, when the ordinary names would have made the material easier to grasp. As a result, at times you'll feel like you are taking a course in disciplinary vocabulary. At other times, Professor Wolf engages in a penchant for long, abstract sentences: "What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principles characteristics of oral language." This sentence could be rewritten as "Most impressively, Sumerians developed a written language that made reading easier to learn by visually reproducing what was spoken." Obviously, her rendition is more creative . . . but I like mine better.

Here is what was new to me: Reading involves complex mental processes that are not natural to the brain's earliest functions. As a result, new neural connections need to be developed in the right order if someone is to be a good reader. Various brain scan tests have illuminated this finding and those neural pathways are well illustrated and described in this book. But there are different ways that those neural connections can be made, some of which will make reading difficult.

The book's strength is in providing you with a sense of how humans learned how to develop written language and read it rapidly . . . and gain greatly from reading. The book also is good in the area of making the case for those who can't read aren't deficient, rather than are different in ways that offer other potential advantages such as creativity. If someone in your family doesn't read well, you'll love that part of the message.

Where I thought the book was weakest was in worrying about the implications of highly condensed (and possibly inaccurate) online information substituting for traditional reading of books and articles. To me, it seemed like much ado about nothing. Human curiosity will always drive forward learning, something that Professor Wolf doesn't address. Provide that curiosity with more tools and resources, and more learning will take place. Here's an example. Today I was finishing my proofreading of my latest book. In the past, I had researchers diligently check each quotation for accuracy and source. Inevitably, there would be mistakes that weren't caught and made it into my books. By using the internet to crosscheck the sources this time, I was able to do the task much better and in less time . . . correcting many mistakes in the reference sources in my library. Having had this experience, I'll probably do more seeking of quotations directly from the internet in the future . . . and that will probably improve the quality of my quotations.

Bravo, Professor Wolf!

excellent guide.. , 25 Mar 2008
ok firstly, id like to say that this is a great book, however it is not magic and you do need to put in the hours to get results (as with most things worth learning i suppose) .. this is my first effort at trying to improve my reading so unfortunately i cannot compare it to any of the other books out there but I am very happy with what i have. not too much waffle and he explains the exercises well so you really understand why youre doing them.. (some of the things may seem a bit mundane if you dont see the context of why it is youre doing them and what it is youre working on - e.g. reading and rereading the same passage numerous times, practicing strange hand movements to guide your eyes along the page etc) but his reasoning is pretty sound and so far they are working. ( i am about half way thru the book, have easily doubled my reading rate and improved retention for a similar text compared to when i began the course.) now this may seem pretty good already and that alone would have been worth the price to me, but when you start this book,it does honestly make you realise how much you can potentially improve so long as youre willing to put in the hours....

LEARN TO SPEED READ, 04 Feb 2004
If you want to learn to speed read in around 6 weeks then this is the book for you. However practise makes perfect and you must be prepared to put in the time and work. The pracise tasks are simple and fun to do as you are reading your chosen texts. The book does state that you will be a competent speed reader after the 6 weeks it will take you to read the book. You can take longer if you wish as the more time you put in to practising, the more competent you will be at speed reading. This book does exactly what it says on the tin. All you have to do is choose some books that you have always wanted to read, sit back and start the course.

Fantastic, 31 Jan 2004
The book has already made a big difference to my reading, and I've only got one sixth through it! You do need to put in the time to do the exercises, but it's well worthwhile. And there isn't a lot of waffle at the start.

Speed reading manual with exercises- brilliant, 04 Oct 2003
I've read several books on speed reading and this is the best. It gives an easy to follow structured series of exercises with lot of options for you to find the best one for you.

Buy it today - you'll not regret it!

One of the best on speed reading, 13 Aug 2001
This is one of the best books on speed reading around.

I had been on a speed reading course recommended by my secondary school - which I now know was a complete scam, and ended up costing my parents about a thousand pounds! I would advise everyone to read this book - at the price it is a complete bargain.

The author guides you through the different ways to increase your speed as well as your comprehension. The underlying argument of the book is that we are not taught how to read past our early childhood, which means we read inefficiently - word for word. With practice this can be corrected, so your speed and comprehension dramatically improve.

I could write here that my speed when up 5 times or whatever, but that isn't the way to look at it. Rather the book has given me the tools so that if I want to I can read up to 3000 words per minute, or read harder material at 500 wpm. The whole point is that the speed you read at is dependent on the type of material being read, and the aim of reading (memorisation, or just for fun for example).

So what are you waiting for - buy it!

An entertaining explanation of the reading process, 28 Jun 2008
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, an expert on the reading brain, describes how our brains manage to read. Reading is not an innate activity, but it is an invention, and only a few thousand years old at that. It does not come naturally to humans in the way that walking or eating does and on the first page of this book, we learn that it is only because of the remarkable "plasticity" of our brains that we are able to achieve an understanding of the written word.

The book is divided into three parts. Firstly the history of how humans learned to read, secondly how reading is learned and how it develops, and thirdly what happens when in cases like dyslexia, something goes wrong in the "learning to read" process.

The reference to Proust in the title refers to passages from Proust's writings in which he describes the pleasure of reading, the memories that are evoked by thinking back to special books from childhood (how Proustian!), and the "reading sanctuary", that place of escape, a refuge from the world and its troubles. If Proust is a metaphor for a particular approach to reading, so the squid in the title refers to early neruo-scientific investigations of that creature which found how neurons fire and transmit to each other, adapting when things go wrong, repairing and compensating along the way. The squid analogy refers to the way reading required something new from existing structure of the brain, only possible because of the "plasticity" referred to earlier.

Wolf describes how reading actually changes us. We interact with books, both making them our own (everyone reads a text in their own way), but we are also permanently changed by them. "We bring our life experiences to the text, and the text changes our experience of life". Whenever we read, our original boundaries are challenged, teased and gradually placed somewhere new. An expanding sense of "other" changes who we are.

The section on the development of alphabets and reading systems is fascinating. Different types of brain activity are needed to read say Mandarin Chinese than are required for the Western alphabet. The style of writing shapes the culture to a degree, and certainly changes the reading experience. "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. The expert readers visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns and words". The eye moves ahead with a Western text, but moves leftward with a Hebrew text, gathering advance information about the text before it even reaches it.

The section on dyslexia was less interesting to me, but no doubt with be of great interest to educators and parents of dyslexic children. I am sure however that these chapters fit well into the book as a whole because they do actually illustrate what happens when for most of us, reading works flawlessly.

For those, like me, who are interested in "books about books", and the reading process Proust and the Squid would be an excellent addition to their library, a book to refer back to and to re-read. It is a little difficult to take in all the scientific material about brain processes, but there is much of immediate interest, the more complex neuro-science being available for study at a later time.

The mystery behind being able to read (or not) explained., 18 Apr 2008
Maryanne Wolf provides a fascinating insight into how we learn to read and the amazing things our brain does to make it happen. She also gives a comprehensive explanation of all the things that can go wrong. We expect our children to master in a couple of thousand days (from scratch as our brains aren't wired for reading at birth) what it took humanity several thousand years to develop. An important book for parents, teachers and anyone interested in one of humanities main achievements.

Literary, Historical, Biological, Cognitive, and Futurist Insights into Reading, Creativity, and Brain Development, 05 Oct 2007
I was attracted to this book by the title: What could Proust and a Squid have in common? As it turned out, squids make only two cameo appearances in the book on pages 5-6 and 226 (probably to justify the title in references to the early use of squids in neuroscience studies and for conjecture about passing along genetic traits that make survival more difficult), but Proust in pretty mainstream throughout the book as a resource and reference for describing the richness that reading can bring to individual experience.

Professor Wolf has written a multidisciplinary book that is mind-boggling in its breadth. You'll learn everything from how writing and alphabets developed to why Socrates disfavored reading to how mental processes vary among dyslexics who are reading different languages to the best ways for diagnosing and overcoming reading difficulties.

Yet unlike most multidisciplinary books, this one is very brief and compact. But that compactness is misleading; Proust and the Squid is a challenging book to read and contemplate. Only good readers with a lot of background in literature and neuroscience can probably grasp this book. What's more, there are vast numbers of references that you can pursue if you want to know more.

The writing style makes the book denser than it needed to be. Professor Wolf makes matters worse for lay readers by insisting on the correct scientific names throughout, when the ordinary names would have made the material easier to grasp. As a result, at times you'll feel like you are taking a course in disciplinary vocabulary. At other times, Professor Wolf engages in a penchant for long, abstract sentences: "What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principles characteristics of oral language." This sentence could be rewritten as "Most impressively, Sumerians developed a written language that made reading easier to learn by visually reproducing what was spoken." Obviously, her rendition is more creative . . . but I like mine better.

Here is what was new to me: Reading involves complex mental processes that are not natural to the brain's earliest functions. As a result, new neural connections need to be developed in the right order if someone is to be a good reader. Various brain scan tests have illuminated this finding and those neural pathways are well illustrated and described in this book. But there are different ways that those neural connections can be made, some of which will make reading difficult.

The book's strength is in providing you with a sense of how humans learned how to develop written language and read it rapidly . . . and gain greatly from reading. The book also is good in the area of making the case for those who can't read aren't deficient, rather than are different in ways that offer other potential advantages such as creativity. If someone in your family doesn't read well, you'll love that part of the message.

Where I thought the book was weakest was in worrying about the implications of highly condensed (and possibly inaccurate) online information substituting for traditional reading of books and articles. To me, it seemed like much ado about nothing. Human curiosity will always drive forward learning, something that Professor Wolf doesn't address. Provide that curiosity with more tools and resources, and more learning will take place. Here's an example. Today I was finishing my proofreading of my latest book. In the past, I had researchers diligently check each quotation for accuracy and source. Inevitably, there would be mistakes that weren't caught and made it into my books. By using the internet to crosscheck the sources this time, I was able to do the task much better and in less time . . . correcting many mistakes in the reference sources in my library. Having had this experience, I'll probably do more seeking of quotations directly from the internet in the future . . . and that will probably improve the quality of my quotations.

Bravo, Professor Wolf!

A Method the Works, 20 Oct 2008
I attended a training session for this programme through my local Dyslexia Action Group and was so impressed I bought the book immediately. You do not need the training session - this manual takes the parent/teacher through the programme in tiny manageable steps (hence the title). It really works and is aimed at any age pupil. The results are amazing and FAST.

I would recommend it to anyone!

Easy to use!, 07 Oct 2008
Toe by Toe: Highly Structured Multi-Sensory Reading Manual for Teachers and Parents

15 to 20 minutes a day, 5 or more days a week is the commitment you need to make, but it is well worth it. My daughter was struggling at the age of nine (with a reading age of seven) and in the bottom reading group at school. Two years later she is in the top reading group (is ahead of her chronological reading age) and has gained confidence.
I would recommend that you have some sort of rewards/incentives agreed with your child and that you follow the (very clear) instructions precisely.

Not for everyone but a good start, 29 Sep 2008
I have found this book a useful tool on this road but it is not the definative answer to anything. It may help with some reading skills but my daughter has been doing this in school and home for a long time and I cannot claim it is doing any good. I was warned by a dyslexia expert that it would be a useful tool but that it does not work for everyone but neither would it do any harm. Dyslexia is not about reading and writing but this book is a useful tool to help eleviate some symptons.

Still the best!, 07 Sep 2008
There hasn't been a review for a few years so I thought I'd emphasise that, despite the prevelance of new ways of helping dyslexics (cd roms, games etc) and, although these methods may have their benefits, nothing beats good old slog with Toe by Toe.

This book looks so offputting when you first open it - column after column of minutely differentiated words and acres of tick boxes BUT.... it works! Why?

Because dyslexic people NEED drip feeding day by day, little by little, rule by rule, until it gradually begins to make sense. Those of us lucky enough to just 'get' the rules of English don't realise what a fiendish language it can be. It's like if you find it hard to lose weight - the answer's easy but you have to keep doing it every day.

And despite my fears, both my kids actually enjoy using it. In fact the lack of bells and whistles helps concentrate their minds, and all those little ticks give them a daily sense of achievement.

Excellent results, 29 Jul 2008
We have used this with our seven year old daughter for a period of seven months. She has gone from bottom of the class to top third in that time. The results have been fantastic. She has changed from a shy 'hates reading' child to someone who cannot get enough to read. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It instructs you to follow the directions to the letter, which we did - spending perhaps 15-20 minutes a day with the book.

A great resource, 13 Nov 2008
It doesn't matter if your book club is starting or well established, everyone can get something out of this slim book.

It starts with an introduction by Lionel Shriver, a note from the editor and then a note from a book club member. Then it packs in about 100 books in detail and 14 top ten themes (British & American Classics; World classics; Quick Reads; Challenging Reads; Men's Books; Non-Fiction Books; Books with a Younger Persepective; Humourous Reads; War Books; Crime Books; Gay Reads; Cult Classics; Sci-Fi books and Chilling Reads).

In the detailed pages it has, the book length and year published; a non-spoilered synopsis; Reader and/or Critics opinions; Discussion points; Background info and Companion Books. The questions made me think for the ones I had read and some of them made me want to get my hands on those I haven't.

The range of choices is good, everything from Rebecca to Light a Penny Candle and it's arranged by author. The editors decided to limit themselves to one book per author but as a starting point it's an excellent resource!

The Book Club Bible, 09 Jul 2008
The book I didn't know I needed but now can't imagine how I managed without! For book clubs it is a must, for anyone who wishes to broaden their reading experience it is a fantastic place to begin. A brilliant stocking filler!

Finally! an easy way to pick your next book club book, 03 Jul 2008
I bought this book as it was such a clever idea. The reality is even better, giving you a taste of hundreds of books that you'd never realised that you wanted to read/ had forgotten about. Useful not just for bookclub members but anyone with a regular commute looking for something new to read. Highly recommended.

An entertaining explanation of the reading process, 28 Jun 2008
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, an expert on the reading brain, describes how our brains manage to read. Reading is not an innate activity, but it is an invention, and only a few thousand years old at that. It does not come naturally to humans in the way that walking or eating does and on the first page of this book, we learn that it is only because of the remarkable "plasticity" of our brains that we are able to achieve an understanding of the written word.

The book is divided into three parts. Firstly the history of how humans learned to read, secondly how reading is learned and how it develops, and thirdly what happens when in cases like dyslexia, something goes wrong in the "learning to read" process.

The reference to Proust in the title refers to passages from Proust's writings in which he describes the pleasure of reading, the memories that are evoked by thinking back to special books from childhood (how Proustian!), and the "reading sanctuary", that place of escape, a refuge from the world and its troubles. If Proust is a metaphor for a particular approach to reading, so the squid in the title refers to early neruo-scientific investigations of that creature which found how neurons fire and transmit to each other, adapting when things go wrong, repairing and compensating along the way. The squid analogy refers to the way reading required something new from existing structure of the brain, only possible because of the "plasticity" referred to earlier.

Wolf describes how reading actually changes us. We interact with books, both making them our own (everyone reads a text in their own way), but we are also permanently changed by them. "We bring our life experiences to the text, and the text changes our experience of life". Whenever we read, our original boundaries are challenged, teased and gradually placed somewhere new. An expanding sense of "other" changes who we are.

The section on the development of alphabets and reading systems is fascinating. Different types of brain activity are needed to read say Mandarin Chinese than are required for the Western alphabet. The style of writing shapes the culture to a degree, and certainly changes the reading experience. "Learning to read changes the visual cortex of the brain. The expert readers visual areas are now populated with cell networks responsible for visual images of letters, letter patterns and words". The eye moves ahead with a Western text, but moves leftward with a Hebrew text, gathering advance information about the text before it even reaches it.

The section on dyslexia was less interesting to me, but no doubt with be of great interest to educators and parents of dyslexic children. I am sure however that these chapters fit well into the book as a whole because they do actually illustrate what happens when for most of us, reading works flawlessly.

For those, like me, who are interested in "books about books", and the reading process Proust and the Squid would be an excellent addition to their library, a book to refer back to and to re-read. It is a little difficult to take in all the scientific material about brain processes, but there is much of immediate interest, the more complex neuro-science being available for study at a later time.

The mystery behind being able to read (or not) explained., 18 Apr 2008
Maryanne Wolf provides a fascinating insight into how we learn to read and the amazing things our brain does to make it happen. She also gives a comprehensive explanation of all the things that can go wrong. We expect our children to master in a couple of thousand days (from scratch as our brains aren't wired for reading at birth) what it took humanity several thousand years to develop. An important book for parents, teachers and anyone interested in one of humanities main achievements.

Literary, Historical, Biological, Cognitive, and Futurist Insights into Reading, Creativity, and Brain Development, 05 Oct 2007
I was attracted to this book by the title: What could Proust and a Squid have in common? As it turned out, squids make only two cameo appearances in the book on pages 5-6 and 226 (probably to justify the title in references to the early use of squids in neuroscience studies and for conjecture about passing along genetic traits that make survival more difficult), but Proust in pretty mainstream throughout the book as a resource and reference for describing the richness that reading can bring to individual experience.

Professor Wolf has written a multidisciplinary book that is mind-boggling in its breadth. You'll learn everything from how writing and alphabets developed to why Socrates disfavored reading to how mental processes vary among dyslexics who are reading different languages to the best ways for diagnosing and overcoming reading difficulties.

Yet unlike most multidisciplinary books, this one is very brief and compact. But that compactness is misleading; Proust and the Squid is a challenging book to read and contemplate. Only good readers with a lot of background in literature and neuroscience can probably grasp this book. What's more, there are vast numbers of references that you can pursue if you want to know more.

The writing style makes the book denser than it needed to be. Professor Wolf makes matters worse for lay readers by insisting on the correct scientific names throughout, when the ordinary names would have made the material easier to grasp. As a result, at times you'll feel like you are taking a course in disciplinary vocabulary. At other times, Professor Wolf engages in a penchant for long, abstract sentences: "What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principles characteristics of oral language." This sentence could be rewritten as "Most impressively, Sumerians developed a written language that made reading easier to learn by visually reproducing what was spoken." Obviously, her rendition is more creative . . . but I like mine better.

Here is what was new to me: Reading involves complex mental processes that are not natural to the brain's earliest functions. As a result, new neural connections need to be developed in the right order if someone is to be a good reader. Various brain scan tests have illuminated this finding and those neural pathways are well illustrated and described in this book. But there are different ways that those neural connections can be made, some of which will make reading difficult.

The book's strength is in providing you with a sense of how humans learned how to develop written language and read it rapidly . . . and gain greatly from reading. The book also is good in the area of making the case for those who can't read aren't deficient, rather than are different in ways that offer other potential advantages such as creativity. If someone in your family doesn't read well, you'll love that part of the message.

Where I thought the book was weakest was in worrying about the implications of highly c