76 Quotes by Maryanne Wolf

The first and most common reason for not being a fluent reader is that the child does not yet know how to decode very well yet. They lack automatic decoding skills, and this prevents them from being able to read accurately, much less smoothly and quickly. Decoding accuracy is the first prerequisite to fluency.

There's a richness that reading gives you, an opportunity to probe more than any other medium I know of. Reading is about not being content with the surface.

The same plasticity that allows us to form a reading circuit to begin with, and short-circuit the development of deep reading if we allow it, also allows us to learn how to duplicate deep reading in a new environment. We cannot go backwards. As children move more toward an immersion in digital media, we have to figure out ways to read deeply there.

Reading is a bridge to thought.

The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it.

We know from research that the reading circuit is not given to human beings through a genetic blueprint like vision or language; it needs an environment to develop. Further, it will adapt to that environment's requirements - from different writing systems to the characteristics of whatever medium is used.

Every opportunity to practice is a gift to the developing reader. Practice, practice, practice, in every form and medium!

The act of learning to read added an entirely new circuit to our hominid brain's repertoire. The long developmental process of learning to read deeply changed the very structure of that circuit's connections, which rewired the brain, which transformed the nature of human thought.

We humans invented literacy, which means it doesn't come for free with our genes like speech and vision. Every brain has to learn it afresh.