Judge’s Surprise

My Introduction to Dyslexia

Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash

I have become, by default, a ‘professional judge’ for local Literature Fairs. In our public-school system, a literature fair is held to encourage book and poetry reading, while giving presenter’s their three-to-five minutes oral presentation to recount details of their reading selection.

During the recent school-district-level event, my judging partner (a librarian) and I were scoring the ‘nuts-and-bolts’ elements of the entry: Title, check. Author, check. Publisher and date, check. We looked for presence or absence on the display board for the things we were to review and rate.

Then came the student-entrant. She was a teen female, with a certain bounce in her step and a broad smile. After assuring her that we judges did not ordinarily bite — unless provoked — she chuckled and started her oral presentation. She did quite well in summarizing the content of her book. Her excitement to tell us about her selected book was palpable and not the product of anxiety over an oral presentation.

Near the end of her recital, she offhandedly said that the subject book, a piece of fiction, was the first book she had ever read from cover to cover. Since she was about 15, the uncontrollable expression on the faces of we judges, had to have been noticeable. She quickly…