LETTERZ

A teenager with undiagnosed dyslexia finds hope when a strict teacher takes notice of him in Thompson’s YA novel.

Tenth grader Collin Quinn has always found reading difficult. “The thing I hate most is when people think I’m lazy. They don’t know how hard it is for me just to read one page,” he laments. On the first day of school (and his second year of 10th grade), he meets Mr. Hansen, a stern World History teacher who has a set way of doing things; Collin dislikes him immediately. Mr. Hansen has a lot of rules, and he also likes to randomly call on students from a jar of names on his desk. When Collin is picked to read from the board, he’s able to stall until the bell rings, but on the way out, he steals Mr. Hansen’s laptop and dumps it into a bathroom trash can. This ends up being a blessing in disguise: The rebellious act prompts Mr. Hansen and the dean of the school to realize that Collin has trouble reading. He’s placed into an after-school program where he learns he has dyslexia and is finally given the tools he needs to start succeeding. The easy-to-read, well-paced story’s text is formatted in OpenDyslexic Mono, a font that’s designed for people with dyslexia to make reading easier. There are a few resources Collin learns about that some readers might find helpful in their daily lives, including a browser extension that converts text on websites into OpenDyslexic and an app that converts text to speech. Collin’s problems feel relatable and real; his path to success isn’t a straight line, but it offers struggling readers encouragement the whole way through.

A reassuring story of a teen learning to overcome his difficulties with a learning disability.