Bookstart Around the World 1
Bookstart Around the World 3. Bookgifting program
mes – some examples 3.1 The emergence of bookgifting programmes Bookgifting programmes have existed for a long time. As early as 1989, paediatricians working at a hospital in Boston began handing out books to the youngest children who came for medical examinations (Reach out and Read). BookTrust’s Bookstart programme was launched in 1992 as a pilot project in Birmingham, in which 300 children between the ages of six and nine months were offered books as gifts when they had their medical checkups. At that time, BookTrust, an organisation for promoting reading, joined forces with the library and child healthcare centre in Birmingham to promote reading to young children. During a child’s medical examination, books were given to the family, and the nurse encouraged parents to read with their children. The Bookstart concept has since expanded and similar initiatives can currently be found in about 30 countries. Many of these (24) are affiliated with the global network for early bookgifting programmes as part of EURead, which is an EU institution that works to promote reading (EURead, 2020). Bookgifting programmes of varying sorts are not new for Sweden, either. As early as 1984, BokNallen was started in Markaryd. This was an effort to promote reading and involved, amongst other things, child healthcare centres making home visits to give away books and to play ‘book games’ (Rydsjö, 2012). 35 years later, public libraries and child healthcare centres working together to distribute books as gifts to young children remains the most common activity they collaborate in (Hampson Lundh & Michnik, 2014; Rydsjö, 2012). Collaboration between public libraries and paediatric healthcare services within municipalities and regions in Sweden is not uncommon, and of all public libraries in Sweden, about half mention that they work with paediatric healthcare services and preschools (slightly more than half) (the Swedish Arts Council, 2020). In addition to Bokstart, there are some reading promotion projects and programmes in Sweden that target the very youngest ones. Between 2012–2015, the BERÄTTA, LEKA, LÄSA [‘TELL, PLAY, READ’] initiative for promoting reading was implemented by Läsrörelsen. This initiative aimed to promote collaboration between preschools and libraries by working with reading for children between the ages of one and three years old (Johansson & Hillén, 2016). The project aimed to increase knowledge about children’s literature in the organisations, stimulate the involvement of parents, and promote encounters between young children and literature. Other similar programmes have included Med språket framför sig [‘With the language before them’] (Västerbotten and Halland counties) and Läs för mig pappa [‘Read for me, Daddy’] (ABF), which are examples of how different entities work to promote reading for the very youngest children. Other efforts to promote reading to the very young have also been common in Sweden, such as the work done by preschools on cloakroom libraries (Johansson, 2017) or book gifts in collaborations between libraries and child healthcare services (Rydsjö, 2012). With no claim to provide a complete record of all initiatives to promote reading in Sweden, the overall picture appears to be that, in different places and from a variety of interested parties, there have emerged a number of more or less longterm initiatives for promote reading for the very young, often by means of various kinds of bookgifting ventures. 3.2 Bokstart in Sweden Here we give an abbreviated description of how Bokstart is organised in Sweden. For a more detailed description, please see the review of Bokstart in Sweden (the Swedish Arts Council, 2020). Bokstart was initiated in Sweden in 2014 by the Swedish Arts Council, following the pattern of the Danish Bookstart programme. This means that the five selected pilot projects focused their activities on a certain target group on the basis of their socioeconomic situations, but there was also a complete model for home visits and book giveaways for those aged 6, 12, 18 and 36 months. In 2017, the Swedish Arts Council received a government assignment to develop Bokstart further. That assignment stretched until 2020. The national programme is based on municipalities and regions applying for project funding to initiate a Bokstart project or language network, for which collaboration between libraries, paediatric 11/52