Joyce writes…

Good morning Michelle

Firstly, I must thank you for writing such an amazing series of books. I have loved reading them and they were instrumental in getting my first grandson addicted to reading.

In my role as an educational psychologist, Wolf Brother has been instrumental in not only opening the door to the world of literature to countless struggling readers, but also in stimulating the development of their word recognition skills. This has been because the children have been able to listen to the rich text in the story whilst following along with the printed version thanks to the Whispersync technology (and of course the glorious expressive reading by Sir Ian McKellen). As a result, their sight vocabulary developed by stealth and did, for many of them, develop to such an extent that they were then able to read the rest of the series from hard copy.

My latest convert is another grandson, Yerin, – this one lives in Australia. Yerin is dyslexic and so I persuaded his mum (my daughter) to get the Kindle and Audible versions of Wolf Brother so that he could listen and follow along to see if this would help his reading skills to develop. He was instantly hooked – and we were all delighted. But – and this is the point of my email to you, I didn't realise that books 2, 3 & 6 of the series do not have the Whispersync facility. We can buy a Kindle version and an Audible version of these books, but it is not possible to snyc the two versions together, so the text is not highlighted as the books are read. This means that the opportunity for the stimulation of Yerin's sight vocabulary is lost as he listens to the stories.

Do you know why it is that these books have missed out on the technology? Would it be possible/easy to make Books 2, 3, & 6 as accessible as Books 1, 4, 5 & 7?

With best wishes
Joyce

Michelle Replies…

Dear Joyce, Thank you so much for getting in touch, and it’s amazing to hear how Wolf Brother has helped struggling readers.  I was also fascinated to learn about Whispersync, which I hadn’t heard of before (although that’s not surprising, as I’m in the Stone Age when it comes to technology).  I’m afraid I can’t help you as to why certain of the books miss out on this technology, while others are ok with it.  It’s something for the publishers to tackle; and you might like to contact them, as they may listen to you more than they would to me.  But I’ll raise it with them too, of course. Thanks drawing this to my attention – and thanks too for getting in touch.  I hope that Yerin goes from strength to strength with his reading!  With best wishes, Michelle