New children's book My Storee is full of spelling errors, with author Paul Russell - himself dyslexic - aiming to show children, parents and teachers alike that writing need not get in the way of creativity.

New children's book My Storee is full of spelling errors, with the author - himself dyslexic - aiming to show children, parents and teachers alike that writing need not get in the way of creativity.

The book features a young boy who loves writing stories about dragons, unicorn detectives, robot pirates and alien volcanoes, but that passion is stifled by the teacher's red pen at school until a new teacher allows him to feel safe and write to his heart's content.

Author Paul Russell has been a teacher himself for 20 years, has two degrees and published five books. He's also dyslexic.

He says children are born with creativity.

"When they're actually reluctant to write, normally it means they're reluctant to spell and try and use grammar and structure.

"If you talk to them they will tell you the most amazing ideas, the most amazing stories, and they'll adapt other stories they've heard and they'll modify those stories."

He says that creativity is however often squashed out of them by the rigours of schooling.

"It's one of those things where children innately are storytellers, and I think a lot of the time schools will beat that out of them with making it have to be correct and perfect and structured, and spelling is one of those things.

"I think spelling is important but it's one of those things where I think that it can be taught separately to writing.

"Some children will pick it up ... but some children won't and I think the problem is where it will get to that year 3, year 4 level where it can just be their spelling, it can just be their structure of writing that's holding them back, and it starts holding back everything."

He says children can be taught other ways of writing, and technology is a big help.

"I think the big thing for parents and teachers alike is to let children write, let them read you that story, let them share that story with you first before you pull it all apart.

"I teach year six currently and I have a couple of children in my class who actually use their ipad.

"They talk to it, it gets out their ideas quickly, and they'll email it to themselves and they'll go back and edit those words.

"It's one of those things where if dyslexia was a really narrow thing of exactly they were all the same and all cases were the same it would be a really easy difficulty to get over."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details