In celebration of Dyslexia Awareness Month, I'm featuring authors who have main characters with reading challenges. This week I'm interviewing Polly Holyoke, former teacher and creator of the epic fantasy, Skyriders.
Q: In your new book, the main character, Kiesandra, struggles to read. It's not the main focus of the book, but it is an important subplot. What inspired you to write about a thirteen-year-old with reading challenges?
A: My daughter had severe dysgraphia when she was young, so severe that we ended up placing her in a school for students with learning differences. There, Jessie met several friends with dyslexia, children who had to struggle to read a single word, much less decode an entire sentence. My heart went out to those students because reading had always been such a joy to me, and it was, in a very real sense, such a difficult battle for them. I knew that someday I wanted to show students with dyslexia that they were incredibly bright and that they were incredibly capable.
So, when I started writing Skyriders, I decided to make my heroine Kiesandra Torsun dyslexic even though there are relatively few characters with learning differences in books set in fantasy worlds. Although Kie is only thirteen, she has a demanding and respected job as a junior sky courier, and she does it well. Occasionally her dyslexia makes her job harder, but she has found effective ways to cope with her learning differences. Finding and using those effective strategies is so important for my daughter, and for all students with learning differences.
Q: Considering that Kie struggles to read, it's intriguing that her uncle gave her a book that contains the secrets of how to defeat the evil chimerae. Her mission is to convince the officials in charge of training skyriders to use her uncle's book as a guide when she is actually unable to read it herself. Tell us a little bit about that choice.
A: Kie has a particularly difficult time reading cursive writing, and the journal her uncle makes her promise to take to the capital is written in very old-fashioned script. Kie hasn’t read much of the journal herself, but she has great respect for it, and she knows its contents well because her uncle has read it to her so many times. Like many kids with dyslexia, Kie is a terrific oral learner, and she has an excellent memory. She takes good care of that journal, and she works hard to get adults at the capital to pay attention to the vital information it contains about fighting chimerae before those terrible monsters can overwhelm Prekalt.
Q: Kiesandra and her skysteed, N'Rah, share a very special bond. They are able to communicate telepathically, yet Kie has quite a bit of difficulty communicating with other humans. She often has trouble finding the right words. Many people find it easier to communicate with animals than with humans. Tell us more about that special bond between Kie and her skysteed.
A: My daughter is so gentle and quiet that animals of all sorts seem to love her. In turn, I made sure we always had cats and dogs in our home, because animals clearly brought her comfort when she was feeling anxious. Sadly, so many kids with learning differences, particularly if those differences haven’t been properly diagnosed, often feel isolated and anxious. In Skyriders, I wanted to show what a great help animals can be to kids who suffer from anxiety, for whatever reason, in their lives.
In Skyriders, young people choose to bond with their skysteeds, and once that bond is established, the skyriders can actually hear the thoughts of their flying horses, and those animals become loyal and trusting friends. One of the themes of my book is that friendships do need care and nurturing. So, some of the cadets at the Skyfighting Academy can’t understand their skysteeds well because they spend so little time with them. Once Kie urges those students to start caring for their own skysteeds and spending more hours with them, the cadets’ and their skysteeds’ ability to understand one another quickly improves.
Throughout the book, Kie’s skysteed N’Rah has great faith in her, and his confidence in her abilities gives Kie more self-assurance. That support is crucial during those times she faces particularly difficult challenges, like finding the right words to persuade powerful adults to listen to her.
Q: All the skysteeds have names that start with N' which makes it easier to remember which characters are humans and which ones are horses. As a speech-language pathologist and dyslexia interventionist, I have to ask about the pronunciation of that first syllable. Is it /n/ or /en/?
A: It's "en." Originally, I planned to create skysteed names that actually sound like the whickers, nickers, and snorts that horses make. So, I pronounce “N’Rah” with emphasis on the “N” and with quite a bit of air in the “Rah.” I quickly realized, however, that if all my skysteeds had names with lots of “h,” “m,” and “r” sounds in them, I might confuse young readers. I had to drop the notion of only using consonants that sounded horse-like. Therefore, there are skysteeds in Skyriders with names like N’Seella, even though I’ve never heard a horse make an “s” sound!
It was, by the way, great fun recording all the names and words I had made up in the book and pronouncing them properly for the talented voice actor who performed the audio edition of Skyriders. Emily Woo Zeller did an incredible job of narrating Skyriders and creating voices for both my skysteeds and their humans. If you have a child who enjoys audio books, ask your public library to order the audible edition of Skyriders, and Kie and N’Rah will carry you all off on a thrilling adventure.
Q: Thanks so much for talking with us about Skyriders. I can't wait to read the next installment in the series. How many books total are you planning?
A: The second book in this series, The Sky King, will be released on May 7. It explains the origins of the skysteed breed, and in many ways, I think it is an even deeper and richer book than Skyriders. I have a third book all plotted, but PRH is waiting to see how the sales go for the first two before they offer me a contract. Of course, because I love job security, I have imagined a prequel series set in my skysteed world, and I have some ideas for a trilogy that would take place after the time of Kie’s and N’Rah’s adventures.
Thank you so very much for hosting me on your blog during Dyslexia Awareness Month. As a former history teacher and a mother of a young woman with learning differences, I think we should all be doing our best to help people understand that children learn in different ways, and they will be successful in life, no matter the challenges they face in school.
Thank you so very much for hosting me on your blog during Dyslexia Awareness Month. As a former history teacher and a mother of a young woman with learning differences, I think we should all be doing our best to help people understand that children learn in different ways, and they will be successful in life, no matter the challenges they face in school.
Thanks so much for sharing your experiences and insights with us.
Find out more about Polly, her other novels, and where to find her books on her website at https://pollyholyoke.com/
Read about other books that either feature main characters with dyslexia or are written by authors with dyslexia:
A Walk in the Words - October 2022
Henry Winkler and the Hank Zipzer Series - October 2020
Laurie Halse Anderson - October 2020
Dav Pilkey and the Captain Underpants Series - August 2019
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