OK, you are going to have to bear with me as this is my first ever book review! I am 44 and I really should be reviewing material that is age appropriate but I have been really struck by The Story Machine by Tom McLaughlin.
 Click here to visit Tom’s Website |
Having written about Margaret Rooke and her book Creative, Successful, Dyslexic, I thought I would try to find other books that could be inspirational to readers of this blog. Something grown up, sensible, and again age appropriate…. Then I found this book!
I found out about this book through the Guardian’s article, ‘A dyslexic author’s writing tips for dyslexic kids’ by Tom McLaughlin. In this article Tom, who has always had a weird relationship with words, offers his supportive and beautiful writing tips to dyslexic children everywhere.
This article inspired me to buy the book and find out more about Tom’s writing style.
So I downloaded The Story Machine onto my Kindle app and took a look…
Firstly, I was struck by how beautiful this book is. Tom does his own illustrations. The first page was a visual feast of colour and charm. The book is a story about Elliott, a boy that loved to find things who finds a typewriter. The book hints that Elliott is dyslexic as he is not good with words, but Elliott is hoping that the strange machine is a story machine.
| Picture taken from The Story Machine, courtesy of Tom McLaughlin & Bloomsbury |
He then discovers that his playing with letters starts to build pictures and from there he can start to make stories. Elliott uses the typewriter to express his stories in a non conventional way.
Find out more about Special Educational Needs, July 7th 2016, Leek, Staffs
