High School Student with Dyslexia Inspired to Write Children’s Book
“In elementary school, I struggled a lot. I had a big imagination but writing, reading and spelling always seemed like impossible tasks. Eventually though, with the help of my tutor, I overcame my struggles and fell in love with reading. Then, about a year ago, I attended an event with my mom and had an opportunity to tell my dyslexia story to an audience of parents and teachers. Their positive reaction gave me a lot of confidence and made me think: How can I contribute to this community? After that, I decided to write the book. ”
Following is an informational Q+A with Rory Andrlik, published children’s author and high school junior. Thank you to Rory for sharing more about her journey and what led her to write an inspiring children’s book for children who struggle with dyslexia. You can feel Rory’s love for learning throughout this interview. We wish Rory continued success as she moves toward accomplishing her goal of becoming a food scientist. Be sure to get a copy of Rory’s book today and share it with a child who may find reading difficult or donate a copy to your local library.
Q: Please tell our readers a bit about yourself.
Rory Andrlik, author of the The Reading Roar.
A: Hi! My name is Rory Andrlik. I am a junior at Naperville North High School in the Chicago suburbs and my favorite classes are the sciences, especially chemistry, biology and food science. After school, I am usually busy with swimming, coaching, the robotics team, volunteering, and working part-time in a plant molecular biology laboratory where I help test plants for diseases.
In September, I published a children's book titled The Reading Roar: A Magical Learning Journey. I wrote it to inspire young students, ages 6 to 10, who struggle with dyslexia. I also used 12 years of my Spanish dual-language instruction to translate the book and reach more readers.
Q: You are a published author – congratulations! What inspired you to write children’s books?
A: In elementary school, I struggled a lot. I had a big imagination but writing, reading and spelling always seemed like impossible tasks. Eventually though, with the help of my tutor, I overcame my struggles and fell in love with reading. Then, about a year ago, I attended an event with my mom and had an opportunity to tell my dyslexia story to an audience of parents and teachers. Their positive reaction gave me a lot of confidence and made me think: How can I contribute to this community? After that, I decided to write the book.
Q: Could you share the process you went through in writing these books?
A: I knew the story I wanted to tell pretty quickly. The hard part is always getting all my ideas from my head to the paper, so I started with a really rough draft of the whole story without any chapters. Because I struggled to organize my thoughts I needed to just get it all on paper. My parents would read each draft and give me edits and suggestions for developing the story more. I went through about 6 or 7 drafts before I got to the final version and that took me several months because I was only writing on weekends during the school year and a little more during my summer break.
After I had the full story, I organized it into chapters, named each one, and started to brainstorm the artwork. This was also when I started translating a Spanish version. My dad helped me find some illustrators through a website of freelance artists and I found the one I liked most and gave them direction on each character, the style of the art I wanted, and what I wanted each illustration to look like. Similar to the writing process, we went through multiple drafts of each illustration. Once we had the illustrations and the story, the book came together pretty quickly and my dad helped me publish it. He is also an author so he was guiding me along the way.
Q: Tell us about the characters that readers will encounter? What inspired these characters?
A: The book’s main character is a young dragon named Ember who has a hard time reading and writing. She embarks on a magical journey, makes new friends and completes three challenges that help empower her to achieve her goals and teach her some valuable lessons along the way about resilience and perseverance.
The three challenges that Ember faces incorporate some of the different multisensory ways I learned to spell and read in elementary school with my tutor, so a lot of the story came from my own learning journey.
I got the idea for a dyslexic dragon because I used to doodle dragons a lot in junior high as a coping mechanism. It helped me focus. My parents still have pictures of dragons that I drew hanging up around our house!
Q: As a student with dyslexia, what has been most challenging for you?
A: The biggest challenge I faced was finding and building my confidence. From an early age I felt secluded because I couldn’t read as well as others. Many of my friends would be reading large chapter books while I would be relearning how to read, write and spell with a tutor 2 times a week. After a lot of hard work I was able to feel more comfortable with myself as a person and even share my story.
Q: What advice would you offer to other students who are dyslexic?
A: My advice for other students with learning disabilities would be to never give up. Some parts of school will be challenging but the hard times are worth it. You just need to get back up again and keep working. Give it your best and try to make the learning fun. For me, I think dyslexia gave me my strong work ethic and resiliency. I love school. I love working hard and solving challenging problems.
Also, don’t back down from taking hard classes or learning a second language. I have been in a dual language program since kindergarten. I learned in Spanish about half of my day all through elementary school and 6th grade and then took very hard Spanish classes every year from 7th grade on. At multiple times through elementary and junior high, I had the option to stop the program and just do English, but I didn’t want to stop. I loved learning Spanish even though it wasn’t easy. Learning English with dyslexia was hard, and learning Spanish on top of it was extra hard, but it was also extra rewarding. Now, I’m in Spanish 5 and going to be taking AP Spanish next year and I love that I can speak and write in another language.
Q: Who would you consider your role model or biggest supporter? (This could be more than one person!)
A: I would consider my mom and dad as my role models. They inspire me to be my best self everyday. My dad always says he is the president of my fan club.
Q: What’s next for you?
I am focused on my studies and have big goals for college. I really want to use my interests in biology and chemistry to major in food science and become a food scientist one day. That’s my dream. I am taking a food science class at my high school this semester and I love it. My class project is researching the different dairy and non-dairy bases in ice cream. I make a new batch of the same ice cream every weekend at home using a different milk base (like coconut milk, soy milk, skim milk, 2%, etc.) and then bring samples into school to analyze taste, texture and quality with student tasters. So far, coconut milk ice cream is very popular.
Q: Where could readers buy your book?
Readers can buy my book on Amazon - both the English and Spanish versions are available there. Thank you!
https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Roar-Magical-Learning-Journey/dp/B0CHC5PQHD