When we read, a few things are going on in the brain in parallel with each other. In parallel means happening at the same time and connected in some way. The How to Read Book focuses on how we process letters and sounds. Processing letters and sounds isn’t the only thing going on in reading, but it’s the first. There are other processes that help us link words to meanings and symbiotically use those meanings as context to inform our decoding. There are really cool things happening, too, like simulating the language we’re reading in corresponding sensory regions so that you can feel the ‘cold, metal doorknob’ and hear the ‘squeak of the hinges’ as you read those words. But processing letters and their corresponding sounds kicks the whole thing off.

The visual system responsible for processing letters is called the Visual Word Form Area, or ‘letterbox.’ The letterbox must be able to identify, retain, call up, and manipulate letters. It’s what allows us to picture letters without having to see them.

The auditory system responsible for processing phonemes, the individual sounds of our language, is called phonemic awareness. It must be able to identify, retain, call up, and manipulate sounds. Your phonemic awareness is what lets you hear the word spooft without having to say it out loud.