Bookstart Around the World 1
1. Introduction 1.1 Background The Swedish Arts C
ouncil’s Bokstart initiative aims to stimulate language development in young children from 0–3 years of age, targeting caregivers and other adults who are close to young children. Introducing literature and literacy activities (such as reading, singing, playing, talking and rhyming) early on in a child’s life promotes their relationship with and development of language. In short, Bokstart involves working with family literacy; that is, efforts aimed at the whole family to promote reading. The core of a Bokstart project is to find ways for new parents to foster a child’s relationship with literature and language. In the Bokstart projects that are currently under way in Sweden, the various interested parties (usually) work together – public libraries, regional libraries, child healthcare services and preschools. They are therefore projects that require, and aim to promote, collaboration between different responsible organisations, which all share the task of supporting language development in young children. In 2015, the Swedish Arts Council launched Bokstart in Sweden. Three pilot projects (which later became five) began distributing books as gifts to families in residential areas characterised by socioeconomic challenges. Between 2017 and 2020, the Swedish Arts Council was tasked by the government to expand the Bokstart initiative to more municipalities and regions in the country, and to connect this work with preschools (from 2018). This initiative gives municipalities and regions the opportunity to receive grants for project activities and language networks. The Swedish Arts Council also provides additional support, including the provision of information materials and a website (bokstart.se). There are currently about 30 initiatives under way in municipalities and regions in Sweden, in which libraries, child healthcare services, preschools and other similar organisations work together to improve the opportunities for young children to become individuals who can read and write. On behalf of the Swedish Arts Council, a review of the national Bokstart initiative was conducted in the spring of 2020. On the basis of Swedish and international research, the Swedish Arts Council now wishes to also gather knowledge and experience from bookgifting programmes aimed at young families. Bookstart is a concept that exists all around the world; about 30 countries run programmes to promote reading amongst the very youngest children. This means that there is a considerable amount of knowledge and research available from similar bookgifting programmes. In this report, we collect knowledge so that everyone who works to promote reading for the little ones should be inspired and able to relate their practical knowledge to experiences and research from similar initiatives. It can probably be considered common knowledge that reading out loud with one’s children is important for their writtenlanguage development. However, it has not been quite as obvious just how early in a child’s life such reading aloud should begin, nor how much of a difference it can actually make. Bookstart is aimed at the very youngest ones, and is designed to introduce young children to the world of language through books. Introducing families to literature and promoting simple, funfilled, languagestimulating literacy activities (such as reading aloud, singing, rhyming, chanting and playing) is the essence of Bookstart. This is based on the understanding that the process of a child’s language development begins early on and that various literacy activities contribute to this development. A child’s home language environment and the literacy habits of the family are key to its language development. Bookgifting programmes that aim to have a positive effect on this have great potential for doing so. In this report, we examine what research says about the impact that bookgifting programmes have on language development in children. Bookstart representatives (or book givers as they are often termed internationally) from libraries, child healthcare centres and preschools can play an important part in supporting children and their families during their language development process. For this reason, this report examines observations from bookgifting programmes in different countries. There is considerable 5/52