Review of The Science of Reading in Action: Brain-friendly Strategies Every Teacher Needs to Know, by Malia Hollowell

Amal Elassi is a visiting assistant professor at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky. She earned her PhD in curriculum and instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023. Her research focuses on the linguistic identities of Muslim adolescent girls navigating public and Islamic schools in the United States, with particular attention to how language, faith, gender, and race intersect in their educational experiences. She teaches methods courses in elementary literacy, social studies, and cultural enculturation across global educational traditions, and she supervises student teachers across diverse school settings. Prior to her doctoral work, Dr. Elassi taught English as a foreign language in Egypt for seven years and conducted action research on reading comprehension difficulties among multilingual learners. She is deeply committed to culturally responsive teaching and research that honors the complex, lived experiences of minoritized students.