BILLIE THE BRAIN LEARNS TO READ is a book for young children with a loftier purpose. Author Dr. John Hutton and illustrator Gabriella Vagnoli have crafted a fascinating work that seeks to educate readers about the goings-on inside the growing brain.
Part of the story’s remit is that it’s intended for families to read, as well as advocates and educators. The format speaks to this: Billie’s story is depicted on the right-hand page in rhyme as she learns to perceive the world through the senses and acquire language, while an accompanying left-hand page details which parts of the brain do what and at what points during a child’s development. Lots of useful information is presented on the subjects of dialogic reading and phonological awareness, among others. Two-page spreads at the end of the book describing the sources of reading difficulties and a detailed timeline showing reading milestones add value for the parent or guardian. Meanwhile, Vagnoli’s illustrations thread the needle very adroitly, with a well-judged mix of anatomically accurate diagrams of the brain and cheerful, anthropomorphic depictions of Billie herself.
As BILLIE THE BRAIN LEARNS TO READ attempts to accomplish this dual purpose of entertaining and informing, the reader wonders what the appeal of the book is to the young reader. The story is thin, and younger audiences may struggle with the lack of a throughline. Interestingly enough, the readers who are perhaps best situated to get the most out of it are slightly older children and older siblings. Surely kids not yet reading fluently themselves but ones who are curious about how language is acquired are the target audience most likely to engage in precisely the sort of dialogic reading that Hutton so enthusiastically advocates. If that person happens to be an elder brother or sister, the advantage is even more pronounced: Older children can sometimes struggle to correctly perceive the right developmental stage of their younger siblings, and can pitch their reading too high or too low accordingly.
A book of this sort, alerting the audience to the various different ways of approaching the written word as it does, is excellently placed to enable young readers to comprehend the learning process more fully.
The mass of detailed information for young readers, parents, educators, and advocates makes author Dr. John Hutton’s and illustrator Gabriella Vagnoli’s BILLIE THE BRAIN LEARNS TO READ a valuable book.
~ Craig Jones for IndieReader