As above, I think this could be `readers._spatial` here as long as the `_spatial` reader was also unquoted.

I understand if it seems less error prone to quote all reader names.  But I can also imagine adopting the convention that readers/writers with names like node names are quoted and all psuedo-node readers (or whatever we want to call these) are not quoted.

I don't think making a change here is too important.  But I like better the idea of using dot syntax for things like `obj.filters` above - as  long as the object is not going to get returned to the user.