Children with dyslexia have a hard time reading long and text heavy books. There are a lot of ways to improve the readability for them. But this is often not taken into account. I designed a book to encourage reading. This book makes it easier and more fun to read for kids with dyslexia. For the book I used the story “Ridder Schijtebroek” written by the famous Dutch author, Carry Slee.
Kids with dyslexia often read books that are written for kids that are a few years younger than themselves because these stories are easier for them to read, but this also takes away the fun of reading since the stories don’t match their age. The book I designed is partially audio recorded, giving the kids brakes in between reading and making the part they must read on their own shorter. Making it possible for them to read books that are written for their own age. Having the first part of a chapter audio recorded also motivates them to continue reading the book.
Another problem for kids with dyslexia is understanding what is written. They can read a text and be so focussed on reading the correct words, that they forget where the text was about, making it feel useless to read at all. In the encourage to read book there is a blank page after each chapter for them to draw on. On this page they draw about the story making them think back about what happened in the story and helps them develop a better read comprehension. So, this not only makes it more fun to read the book, but it also trains the kids to not only read the text but also understand what is written in it.
I used a sans serif font, large line spacing, big font size, different coloured text for sentences that are told from a person’s perspective and the text is divided into smaller sections. In addition to that, sentences and Illustrations are well apart. All of this is done to improve readability. The big title pages, parts they don’t have to read themselves, drawing pages and the big font size, gives them the satisfaction of turning pages more often. Increasing the fun of reading.
Photos taken by Gijs de Kort Fotografie
