Proust and the Squid

Introduction

I was introduced to blogging about a year and a half ago when my brother started a family blog. I love adding photos and writing about what I'm up to as well as seeing what my brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews are doing. I think of it as an interactive family story.

Last Fall, I began my own blog as part of a class on reading and writing digital texts. I had a funny experience early one morning when I posted an entry and realized I was in my family's blog. Fortunately I fixed it right away. There's definitely something about writing to an audience. I imagine my family would have wondered who I was trying to impress with my textbook entry!

Besides my family blog, two of my nieces have blogs that I really enjoy. One niece is a photographer who digitally scrapbooks and her posts are visually amazing. The other one is a very talented interior designer who posts a new, original idea, along with how-to instructions daily.

As I was searching different blogs, I found First Lady, Michelle Obama's, and was impressed that she would use this forum for public access. Of course the tone or voice she uses is much more formal than the personal ones I enjoy. I also followed a few news blogs in the interest of reading what others had to say about news-worthy events.

Two of my friends at school have set up class blogs. One teaches second graders and the other fifth. The fifth grade teacher has had to set clear expectations, which happens to be my main concern about blogging with students. She found that some were using it just to catch up on what their friends were doing after school hours, instead of staying focused on the book discussion and science experiments. Because of this, she's had to be more involved as a monitor than she had originally planned. All in all, it's been a good experience for both teachers. This is the year I plan to start one with my class.

So now . . . Welcome to my book blog on Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf. I chose this book for two reasons. First of all, I really like the author's name. Secondly, I'm interested in what French novelist Marcel Proust and an ordinary squid have to do with "The Story and Science of the Reading Brain", subtitle of the book.

A year ago I took a class on the nature of the reading brain. I was introduced to ideas I had never considered before about how the brain functions. As a cognitive neuroscientist and reading scholar, the author of this book is well-versed in presenting both the nature and nurture aspects of reading.

The book jacket begins with, "The act of reading is a miracle. Every new reader's brain possesses the extraordinary capacity to rearrange itself beyond its original abilities in order to understand written symbols. But how does the brain learn to read?" That's a good enough hook for me. I hope it is for you, too.

The graduate class I'm enrolled in this summer is examining the definition of literacy in a world where the written word is literally at our fingertips. Wolf's introduction shows that this book will attempt to redefine the reading brain in regards to the wealth of digital knowledge available today.

Happy Reading!