Dyslexia — The Learning Barrier

Chapter eight is devoted to a little-discussed but very important topic: «twice-exceptional» children — those who are gifted or talented but also have a physical or mental difficulty. On the physical side the book lists visual, hearing and physical impairments; on the mental side, learning disability, ADHD, autism and Asperger syndrome. The most common combination is giftedness with a learning disability, the second giftedness with ADHD.

The chapter's practical value lies in its advice on assessment: these children should be evaluated not with a single test but with a full «diagnostic battery» — a detailed family history, intelligence tests such as the WISC-R, tests of gifted students' behavioural traits, achievement and creativity tests, the gap between expected and actual performance, portfolio assessment, and input from parents and teachers. The book rightly warns that in children with physical impairments the problem is noticed at once while their strong intellectual potential is often overlooked; focusing only on weaknesses stunts their strengths and further damages an already fragile self-image.

The most interesting part is the three groups of intellectually twice-exceptional children. The first are gifted children who struggle through lack of motivation and school failure and are sometimes labelled «lazy». The second are children diagnosed with a learning disability whose giftedness has gone unnoticed. The third is the hardest case: giftedness and learning disability «mask» each other, so in class the child looks neither gifted nor troubled, and their motivation is easily broken. This classification is genuinely eye-opening for parents and teachers.

Chapter nine aims to be encouraging: «Dyslexia is no reason for failure — don't be afraid». It lists the names and short biographies of 27 celebrities, from Albert Einstein to Tom Cruise and from Leonardo da Vinci to Jennifer Aniston, as «dyslexic». The purpose is understandable — to give children and families hope — but the list is problematic. There is no reliable evidence that historical figures such as Einstein, Mozart, Edison or Washington were dyslexic; these are internet myths, and Stephen Hawking's serious illness was not dyslexia. Muhammad Ali's date of birth is even given as a date of death.

The chapter is weak in another way too: the list says nothing about how these people dealt with dyslexia — it simply recites birth dates, awards and roles. Rather than inspiring, such a list stays superficial and reads more like a web page than a scientific book. The gap between chapter eight's serious language, useful to teachers, and chapter nine's popular style also betrays that the book was compiled from different sources.

In the end, this part shows both the book's most useful and its weakest side. The chapter on twice-exceptional children provides rare, practical information and, on its own, makes the book worth reading for parents trying to understand a gifted child who is failing at school. The celebrity list, however, should be read with caution: the best hope for a dyslexic child is not famous names but early diagnosis, the right support and someone who sees their strengths.

• A separate chapter for each type of learning difficulty
• Diagnostic criteria and signs set out as bullet lists
• Short marginal notes and colour photographs
• A list of English-language academic sources at the end