Move over Sudoku!
CTV Montreal did a story on Mirror Read October 23, 2010. It was entitled, “A New Brain-Teaser Challenges Sudoku’s Throne.
Here’s what Christine Long, of “What’s On Montreal” had to say:
“Like Sudoku and brain-age games, mirror reading engages and stimulates parts of the brain that might otherwise be napping. Mirror Reading is reading when the letters and words are backwards – you can put the book up to a mirror to figure it out.
A Dawson College instructor is taking an old idea and going hi-tech with it.
Lewis Carroll the author of Alice in Wonderland wrote backwards. Leonardo da Vinci wrote backwards. So it’s not a new idea, just an idea that hasn’t been brought to today’s readers, until now.
Reading or writing backwards is like mental juggling. Reading backwards jogs your brain like a puzzle, but if you’re reading the news backwards, you’re getting content too.
Dr. Shelagh Robinson says, “Normal reading is a lot of analytic language, logic, precision, left-brained thinking. But when we add the mirror text, suddenly there’s an extra activity.”
Dr. Shelagh Robinson has made Mirror Reading her second job. Her students at Dawson College don’t even know that their prof has created two new apps for the Apple Store, in Mirror Reading, which is like playing scramble backwards. Then there’s the kid’s books she’s also written.
Volunteer testers Emma and Maya at Oink Oink Children’s Books in Montreal had this critique,
“I think the books are really interesting!”
It’s brain exercise that’s just kind of fun.
Shelagh notes, “Sometimes it’s the slowest readers who are the best mirror readers.” “
Thanks CTV!
Let us know what you think of Mirror Reading.
wish I’d had this option when I was teaching and when I was “momming”
Thanks! I think we can always learn, and always teach – little ones or big. And while “momming” may be over, aunty-ing never ends…