The Polish Book Institute

Today, as part of the International Children's Book Fair in Bologna, a debate was held by specialists in the field of bookstart programmes. The discussion was chaired by UK-based subject matter expert Peter Jenkins from BookTrust UK, and experiences were also shared by Emmi Jäkkö from the Finnish Reading Center, Izumi Sato from Bookstart Japan, and Krzysztof Piskorski from the Book Institute.

The discussion "Boosting readership among children. Are bookstart programmes the key to success?" began with the question of why bookstart programmes target such young children, even as young as infants. Emmi Jäkkö from the Finnish Reading Center said that one of the reasons for this is scientific research, according to which babies benefit greatly from exposure to books in the first year of life. The second reason was for families to get into the habit of reading from the very beginning, when parents are most involved in raising their child and want to give them the best possible start. Izumi Sato from Bookstart Japan added that the love of books starts from childhood and is best linked to parental love.

Krzysztof Piskorski from the Book Institute presented the project "Small Book – Great Man" aimed at three different age groups: infants, pre-schoolers, and school-age children, adding that the Institute wanted to create "a trend for cross-generational reading".

Another theme taken up by Peter Jenkins was the issue of tackling social inequality through bookstart programmes.

The experts also discussed, among other things, how shared reading builds relationships between children and parents, also supporting social interaction, the primacy of social media over other forms of spending time, as well as the idea of going out with a book - which is the model of bookstart campaigns - to the readers, instead of waiting, as Peter Jenkins noted, until the readers themselves visits a library or a bookshop.

We invite you to watch the entire panel: