The Children’s Book Week has started and this year everything is all about the theme ‘full of adventure’. And that adventure already starts on the cover of the Children’s Book Week Gift. The book is called: Lexie and Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
Try to pronounce that well in one go. That is almost impossible to do!
And that is precisely the intention, says writer Kevin Hassing. Because Lexie, the main character, has dyslexia and struggles with difficult words every day.
In the story, Lexie wishes that all the difficult words disappear. But it soon becomes apparent that she has also lost half classrooms and even her teacher. Together with her best friend Riff, she has to solve it and discovers that her uncertainty can be her strength.
Hassing explains in a playful way what it feels like to have dyslexia.
The title of the book evokes many responses on the street. A father says laughing: “So! That’s a long word!”
Other children have their own difficult words. “Clau … how do you say it again? Claustrophobia!”, A boy says on his bike, on the way to school. His friend finds raspberry a difficult word. “I often say Frambroos,” he laughs.
And a grandmother who is on the road with her granddaughter Leah was just on his way to the bookstore. “Leah loves it when we read, so we’ll get that book soon.” She believes that you cannot start reading early enough. “I think Leah was less than six weeks old and we already read a book for, great right?”
Yet there are also children who are honest that reading does not always feel nice. “The letters are very small and it’s hard to see what everything is,” says a girl. A mother adds: “Good that attention is paid to this. For one person going to read automatically and for the other it is a challenge.”
The Children’s Book Week Gift is available free of charge from 1 to 12 October with the purchase of at least 13.50 euros in children’s books.