Promoting reading 1
younger generation, but also the reverse. In Germ
any for example, there are reading promotion initiatives called Books build bridges (Bücher schlagen Brücken), initiated by the organisation Stiftung Lesen, where young people read aloud for the elderly. Reading aloud as a way to bridge the generation gap, in other words. Storytime at the library Story time is one of the activities that has been going on for a long time in the children’s departments of libraries. In the Projekt Sagostunden (The Storytime Project) (Region Library Stockholm), storytime activities were surveyed in Stockholm County by means of a questionnaire and an observational study. This project also tested National Library of Sweden’s quality model for storytime sessions. The results were reported in Leonards plåster (Leonard’s bandaid) (Borrman & Hedemark 2015). This report states that almost all municipalities in Stockholm County offers storytime sessions. These are often held at a library, equally divided between the main library and branches. There are some outreach programmes, but these are not common. For example, two municipalities stated that they offer storytime via their open preschools. The most common form of story time entails a combination of reading aloud from a book, with storytelling and singing. Generally, one of the library’s regular employees is responsible for this activity. Storytimes in languages other than Swedish do exist, but are less common. Storytime for children at the library often uses aids such as puppets, flannel board stories, flipcharts and slates. For inspiration on how puppets can be used in reading promotion, see for instance the book Leading kids to books through puppets (Bauer 1997). Sound, light and scents can also be used for the purpose of illustration and to generate associations. Rhymes, chants and songs are also commonly used during storytime at the library. The Läskonster (Reading arts) project, which ran from 2007–2009 as a collaboration between the Mid-Sweden Regional Libraries, focused particularly on bringing literature to life with the aid of additional art forms such as visual art, theatre and music. Hand puppets, teddy bears and other toy characters are used during storytime as props, and storytimes are even dramatized through dressing up. Working with a drama teacher, the project worked on dramatizing the stories, where children acted not only as audience but also as participants in the drama. After the performance, the children took the story home with them in the form of a book (Hedenström et al 2010). A follow-up study of the Läskonster project showed that above all, the project had led to library staff interacting more with others than in the past (Danielsson 2011). So for example, a collaboration was established between a library and a cultural centre that offers schoolchildren visual arts, drama and music. One of the libraries dramatized a picture book for six-year-olds in collaboration with a visual arts teacher, a drama teacher and a music teacher and also conducted dramatized storytime sessions on the theme of ghost stories, all of which accorded with the overall objective of the project – to get more art forms involved in reading promotion activities. Bedtime stories from inside A reading aloud project of slightly different nature was the Godnattsagor inifrån (Bedtime stories from inside), a collaborative project between the library and correctional services (the prison system) with the aim of giving parents who are in prison the opp45