Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century

Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century

Tales of Literacy

for the 21st Century

Maryanne Wolf

Oxford University Press: 2016

224 pages, paperback

Many of you, like me, wondered when Maryanne Wolf would enlighten us again with her knowledge, wisdom and brilliant explanations about reading. Having read Proust and the Squid quite a few years ago, albeit in bite-sized pieces, I couldn't wait to read Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century. I was not disappointed. Like Proust and the Squid, it took me several weeks to read and absorb the information, ideas, and suggested hypotheses for the future of literacy, but it was well worth the time and effort.

Tales is one book in the series, The Literacy Agenda, published by Oxford University Press. Compiled by Philip Davis, the series "believes there is a great deal that needs to be said about the state of literacy education inside schools and universities." In Wolf's introduction, the following excerpt sets the stage for the book: "What we know about our past and what we are learning about our present reading brain can help us address three issues that will be leitmotifs in this book: What it means to be literate or non-literate in human development; how the future of the expert reading brain is intimately connected to what and how we read and write; and what the effects of a digital 'screen culture' may be for the development of children and adults in literate and non-literate environments." Wolf's well-established literacy agenda is to ensure that hers and others'...