The Wild Book

She has word blindness, or dyslexia, and the doctor says she will never read or write. Every time she tries, the letters jumble and spill off the page, leaping and hopping away like bullfrogs.

How will she ever understand them?But her mother has an idea. She gives Fefa a blank book filled with clean white pages. "Think of it as a garden," she says. Soon Fefa starts to sprinkle words across the pages of her wild book.

She lets her words sprout like seedlings, shaky at first, then growing stronger and surer with each new day. And when her family is threatened, it is what Fefa has learned from her wild book that saves them.

• Based on a True Story: Inspired by the childhood of the author’s own grandmother, this story brings a real piece of history to life.
• Dyslexia Representation: Experience the world through the eyes of a child with learning differences, where letters leap and hop away like bullfrogs until she discovers her own unique way to tame them.
• Historical Fiction for Young Readers: Step back in time to the Cuban countryside of the early 1900s, a world of deep family ties, simmering danger from bandits, and the courage it takes to grow up.
• The Power of Words: Discover how a simple blank book, treated like a garden, becomes a safe place for words to sprout, grow, and ultimately become a tool for saving a family.