I’m a cognitive, developmental psychologist. I’ve taught in the classroom for over 30 years and I’ve raised three of my own children! I earned my PhD from Stony Brook University in 1994 and I have been teaching and raising children ever since. I have marveled at the educational successes and failures of my own three children (the last of whom is now off to university). I have also been teaching at my local community college for over 20 years and while I have seen many of my students succeed, I have also watched some of them struggle badly with the printed word. These are clearly highly verbal students, but their reading comprehension skills sell them short in the classroom. Granted, textbooks aren’t easy to read – they are often packed full of facts that develop concepts at a staggering pace – but how were these students prepared for college-level reading? What was their early childhood experience? Will your children be the success stories or will they struggle with textbooks and comprehending the printed word? This book is about success! This book is about inspiring the greatest number of children to love reading and the comprehension process so that they can’t wait to pick up a book or dive into a textbook (that might be a tad too optimistic, but you get the point…). Aside from my work in the classroom, I have given lectures around the country, published magazine articles, served as an “Ask the Expert” for Texas Family Magazine, edited books for McGraw Hill, worked as a consultant for Relay/GSE, and presented workshops and lectures for the “Distinguished Speaker Series” and the Child Care Councils of Suffolk and Nassau County, New York. My publications, lectures, and workshops cover such topics as: \t“The 21st Century Brain and Other Stories” \t“Pixels vs Play: A Cognitive Developmental Exploration of Play” \t“Neuropsychology and Cognition in the Classroom” \t“Reading: The Magic Formula” \t “Stop Playing and Learn Something” \t“What’s Next, Calculus in Kindergarten?” \t“Reading It All Wrong” \t“Learning to Read and Reading to Learn” \t“The Impact of Technology on Cognitive Growth” \t“What Do We Tell the Parents? Explaining Developmentally Appropriate Practices in the Classroom” \t“Unlocking the Mysteries of Play: A Cognitive Developmental Perspective” \t“A B Seeing: The challenges of reading through the eyes of a child” So, who do I think I am? I hope that I am a catalyst that will inspire change in our homes and in our classrooms so that children of all ages and backgrounds will fall in love with reading and learn to use the printed word to think, grow, and challenge the status quo. How will I accomplish this, you ask? Well, it is my deepest hope that this book will help you to think as a child thinks. This book, which highlights 60 years of cognitive, developmental research (and lighter anecdotal evidence!), is based on this research. I hope that this insight will alleviate some of the frustration that we often experience when we try to teach our children. Together we can look at the learning process through a child’s eyes and more fully appreciate how children think, learn, and process information within the context of learning to read and comprehend the written word. Remember, their brains are different from our brains. They don’t think, speak, or learn like we do. Let’s learn from their perspective so we can appreciate why “this may be difficult to read” …