"Don't ask a dyslexic how to spell," he says. It turns out Laws has never read a book cover to cover. "Not even a novel," he says. Words are a jumble to him. To get through school, he listened to books on tape and textbooks recorded for the blind. This did not stop him from getting his undergraduate degree at Berkeley and his master's in wildlife biology from the University of Montana; he earns his living teaching classes on natural history, scientific illustration, and field sketching.
Most field guides are organized around the expert's division of life forms into their taxonomic, evolutionary groups - all gulls with gulls, all hawks with hawks, for example, which requires the searcher to know where to look in the book. But Laws has devised a clever way to organize his field guide by color. You see a greenish bird. You go to the color key and flip to "Green Birds," and the guide lists birds whose dominant, most eye-catching color is green - combining Anna's hummingbirds, green-tailed towhees, and Lewis's woodpecker on the same page. It is a fast, intuitive, accessible way to do snappy field identifications.
Laws painted every wildflower in his book from sketches and paintings in the field. The same with most of the birds, except the great horned owl, which he kept missing. "We have this idea that all robins, for example, look the same," says Laws. "But they don't. Any more than all collies look alike or all humans. It's because we're not looking hard enough."
From the Washington Post article on Laws:
"He is an absolutely wonderful misspeller," says his father, Robert Laws, a retired San Francisco attorney. "I think his dyslexia is the key."
Meaning a key to his book. "Maybe that's what makes me who I am," Laws says. "If I had the option, I don't think I would cure it." Because maybe his dyslexia helps him see more, better, or differently. "
Laws exemplifies many dyslexic gifts - like keen powers of multisensory observation, artistic ability, and scientific analysis. We liked what he said about collies not all being alike - it's a dyslexic talent too to question assumptions like that in the planning of his field guide. Laws also shows some of that dyslexic transdisciplinary thinking style as he shows members of his wildlife class how to 'draw' bird song.
A short video from Laws' class on Butterfly sketching here:
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