Books about Reading (and Writing): A Reading List from Emily Hanford

Emily Hanford is Planet Word’s first Journalist-in-Residence and host of the groundbreaking APM Reports podcast Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong. In recognition of National Literacy Month, she has curated a book list for Planet Word about reading, writing, and telling compelling stories.

A couple of years ago, when Sold a Story first came out, I put together a list of ten things to read if you want to know more about the science of reading. This list expands on that and includes some of my favorite books about writing and storytelling, too.

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World, Maryanne Wolf

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Aren’t we all thinking about what is happening to our attention spans and our reading habits these days? Maryanne Wolf sure is. In this book, she describes what is happening to our brain as it adapts to the digital world. And what this means for children, who will never know what it’s like to grow up in a world without tablets and cellphones. Wolf was our guest at Planet Word on September 18, 2024.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf

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Another one by Maryanne Wolf! This is one of the first books I read about the science of reading. I think it was 2016; I knew pretty much none of this and it rocked my world. What Wolf can do like almost no one else is tell you a story about what all the scientific research means. And she does it with ample references to her favorite authors. You’re going to get nods to Austen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Dickinson, Eliot, Joyce, Melville — and of course, Proust.

How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine… for Now, Stanislas Dehaene

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This is an absolutely fascinating look at the latest research on our brains and how they learn. There’s lots of interesting stuff in here about artificial intelligence, too, and how the AI revolution is not just helping scientists understand the potential of machines, it’s helping scientists better understand human learning — and just how amazing our brains are! Dehaene was our guest at Planet Word in April 2024. You can watch a video of his talk here.

The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System — and How to Fix It, Natalie Wexler

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Natalie Wexler has done more than almost anyone to bring attention to a problem that may surprise you: many schools are not equipping their students with the knowledge they need to become good readers. Wexler shows how schools have recently focused so much on the decontextualized “skills” of reading comprehension that they have failed to teach the actual knowledge kids need to make sense of what they read. This book is illuminating and at times shocking and is helping many educators better understand what kids need to learn to become good readers.

Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom, Daniel Willingham

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This book starts with the observation that scientists have learned more about how the mind works in the last twenty-five years than in the previous twenty-five hundred — but this knowledge has not made its way into many classrooms. Willingham then explores nine principles about learning and the mind that teachers should know. And if they did, school would probably be more enjoyable — and more effective! The insights include things like, “factual knowledge must precede skill” (in other words, you can’t just Google it. You need to know stuff). It’s a delightful book.

Districts that Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement, Karin Chenoweth

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Reporter Karin Chenoweth spent her career visiting schools that are disrupting the link between high poverty and low academic achievement. Her approach was inspired by Ronald Edmonds, a pioneer in the field of effective schools research, who said back in 1982: “First you identify schools that produce the outcomes you’re interested in. Then you watch them and try to figure out what makes them different from the ineffective schools.” In this book, Chenoweth widens the lens to look at the critical role of school districts. She shows us the systems that are proving the potential of children in poverty all over this country.

Overcoming Dyslexia, Sally Shaywitz

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This book has provided countless confused and worried parents with answers for why their children are having a hard time learning how to read. It provides a fascinating history of evolving knowledge about dyslexia, how to identify it, and what to do about it. It’s guided by the hopeful premise that all children can be taught to read and includes stories of people who have overcome — and even embraced — their dyslexia and gone on to become good readers and very successful people.

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, Stephen Pinker

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I’ve seen this book referred to as the new Strunk and White. Steven Pinker (a member of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary) is a superb writer who also happens to be a cognitive scientist. He brings his appreciation for language and learning together in this insightful book. He says: “Good writing can flip the way the world is perceived.” I couldn’t agree more.

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan Gottschall

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When people ask me why Sold a Story has had such an impact, I often recite this quote: “A story’s most important function is to remind us we are not alone in the world.” I don’t know who said it, but it sums up what Jonathan Gottschall explores in this book. He explains why stories are so fundamental to us as humans. Indeed, you could argue that stories are what make us human. I love this book because it blends science and story elegantly and accessibly.

Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing, Robert A. Caro

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This book has nothing to do with cognitive science or how we learn to read. It’s a series of personal reflections on writing by Robert Caro, the biographer whose massive books on Robert Moses and LBJ explore the nature of power. This book is slim by comparison (just over 200 pages). It’s about why Caro writes and how he does it and I loved the glimpse behind the scenes. There’s also an incredible documentary film, Turn Every Page, about Caro’s relationship with his longtime editor, the late Robert Gottlieb. It includes a fantastic scene about a pencil.

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