Allen Stein

“Comprehension processes [for young readers] grow.... [when] they leave the surface layers of text to explore the wondrous terrain that lies beneath it.

The reading expert Richard Vacca describes this shift as a development from "fluent decoders" to "strategic readers"--"readers who know how to activate prior knowledge before, during and after reading, to decide what's important in a text"....”
― Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

“One of these fabled memory techniques required the person to associate physical spaces—like the interiors of imagined libraries and temples—with the things to be recalled.”
― Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

“The world of fantasy presents a conceptually perfect holding environment who are just leaving the more concrete stages of cognitive processing.... as fluent comprehending readers learn to enter into the lives of imagined heroes and heroines, along the Mississippi or through a wardrobe portal.”
― Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

“So much of a child’s life is lived for others. . . . All the reading I did as a child, behind closed doors, sitting on the bed while the darkness fell around me, was an act of reclamation. This and only this I did for myself. This was the way to make my life my own.”
― Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain