Promoting reading 1
ration with ABF, public libraries, trade unions,
schools, and sports associations – programmes based on both the gender dimension and social class aspect of reading. Another important category of reading role model is peers. That peers influence the reading habits of children and adolescents has been emphasised in research into attitudes to reading in particular. Several projects and campaigns have worked with letting children act as reading role models for other children. In the UK for example, this method has been used to recruit high profile boys at a school to become “Reading Champions”, with the task of encouraging boys to read. The idea of role models lies at the heart of the Book Buddy Reading programme, whose basic idea is to pair readers who are at different levels. For example, children in fifth grade read to children in preschool, with clear benefits for both parties: the younger children have an older reading role model, and older children with reading difficulties are offered practice in reading aloud that they can feel comfortable with. Similar activities occur at several schools in Sweden. In projects that have utilised this model, mentorship has been found to have dual benefits: younger children get attention from older children, and older children boost their self-confidence through acting as role models. Other projects and programmes have utilised reading role models who are outside the immediate social environment of children and young people. The role model idea is key in reading promotion activities that have involved sports organisations. Other reading promotion activities that have combined sport with reading have profiled sports stars as reading role models. In the UK, there is a long history of working with football stars as reading role models, referred to as Reading Stars. The fourth chapter of this book describes some examples of projects that have brought together sport and reading. An important conclusion that can be drawn from these projects is to be clear about what audiences you want to reach. Projects that have brought together sport and reading as a way of reaching boys, and then – in order to not appear to exclude or stigmatise either gender – have appealed to both girls and boys, have ended up with a majority of girls among their participants. The fifth chapter of this book is about reading promotion activities that involve providing readers’ advisory services and book presentations of various kinds. In the library context, the term more closely related to reading promotion is used: literature mediation. The library manages literature, gathers it and makes it available, but the library also acts as a mediator of literature. The term literature mediation is understood as informing about literature, making it visible, stimulating reading enjoyment, and guiding the reader in their selection of literature. Seen in this way, literature mediation is a specific type of reading promotion. Researchers have distinguished between direct mediation through a personal meeting, and indirect mediation in the form of reading tips on a website, for example. Examples of indirect literature mediation include subject departmentalisation, exhibitions, literature lists and written book presentations. Conversations between borrowers and librarians, traditional forms of booktalk and other oral presentations of literature can be regarded as direct forms of mediation. Such distinctions between “direct” and “indirect” can be problematized, particularly if you take into account the forms of mediation that combine the immediacy of speech with the permanency of writing, for example filmed book presentations published on websites. 105