Nina: When you interact through reading, you also build emotional skills and bonds (Photo: Low Yen Yeing/ The Edge Malaysia)
When parents tell Nina Suatan that their infants chew on books — the reason they do not give them one — she quips, “Good. The library will know it’s been used”. And if soggy nibbles can lead to the start of a love of stories and rhymes, there is nothing to it when librarians toss out soiled copies.
Nina is senior adviser and project leader for Bokstart at the Swedish Arts Council, which supports the language development of young children. This government initiative is based on the belief that a child picks up language early on, and fun-filled literacy activities encourage reading and writing.
Bokstart, launched in Sweden in 2014, is a bookgifting programme for kids aged between zero and three. It allocates grants to public and regional libraries, preschools and child healthcare services that distribute the materials to families, especially those who cannot afford them. Parents or caregivers are urged to read with their young’uns and fan their interest by playing with words, singing, rhyming, chanting and reading aloud.
Researchers say children who are introduced to literature early and read to every day pick up more than just new words. They benefit educationally, culturally, socially and emotionally.
Talking about something on a page that piques a child’s interest, be it a picture, phrase or the story itself, can go deeper than broaden his vocabulary, Nina says. “When you interact through reading, you also build emotional skills and bonds that lay the foundation for those things which come on top” — such as knowledge, relationships and education.
“Bokstart can make your chances for school success better. If you have good language from the start, even if someone reads to you, you see letters and learn what reading is about. Those who don’t get this get a bit behind. In school, that difference will just grow bigger.”
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Nina visualises the whole endeavour of developing literacy as an iceberg. “The top is what you talk about, language. Under it is an even bigger part, the child’s positive experiences, the foundation of it all. In one sense, that is also important for sustainability.”
She was in Malaysia last month for a panel discussion at Jom Kita Bincang Kuching, a project by the Embassy of Sweden and various collaborators. She spoke about reading being a responsibility of the whole of society and how literature can be used to improve children’s rights.
Literacy and numeracy for youth are on the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and book-gifting, which enables access to literature, is in step with that goal, Nina thinks. A Bokstart target group is families that do not visit libraries, and librarians in the programme will eagerly share about what they can get there. “Some people don’t know it’s free to borrow books!”
The Swedish Arts Council, the national agency for cultural policies, took the initiative to introduce Bokstart, and a lot of the resources it produces and projects it runs are available, free. “We have books for parents to use and engage their children with language, which you learn in different ways.”
Nina says BokStart has borrowed many features from the original programme established in the UK in 1992 and run by reading charity, Book Trust. It has spread worldwide and is now often helmed by non-governmental organisations. “The core of every project is to find ways for new parents to foster a child’s relationship with literature and language.”
Libraries get grants to buy books and promote reading. A healthcare centre may, for example, use the money to get someone in to take on a staff’s work temporarily, freeing the person to plan and organise programmes that enable parents to stimulate children at their level, using language they may not ordinarily use.
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“When you are reading a book, you can immediately see if the child is not interested. That could be because it’s too complicated. You adjust your language. In other situations, maybe you don’t, so he has the opportunity to hear the words.
“It’s okay if children don’t understand everything you read. There’s still the interest and learning. It’s like if you were singing; you wouldn’t change the lyrics.” Pointing to pictures can take kids further into a story; prompting questions makes them think, and reading about respect for animals and the environment helps them connect with and care for what is around them.
“We let the local projects choose the books and writers they want to work with. The only criteria are it should be easy to play with the book and parents should be able to dramatise the story. Preschool teachers and libraries are knowledgeable about what kids like, or don’t like, and they need to be engaged in choosing books. They are the people who will meet parents and tell them how it should be done; so, they need to feel [the fun] themselves.”
Nurses, too, play a big part in the Bokstart project. They encourage parents to talk to their offspring about what is between the lines and give out height measuring tapes with advice printed on the reverse side. The aim is to get families to interact through language. “In Sweden, 99.9% of parents meet children’s healthcare personnel and trust them. So, what they say is important,” Nina says.
Of late, nurses have noticed that while parents want their children to go on reading after their early years, the latter lose interest once they are given a handphone. It is hard to restrict children from using them. Also, they cannot stop themselves because handphones are very addictive.
Some teachers have imaginative ways of working with digital media and it is not all bad as long as they interact, because there are good programmes and educational materials. “You lose that when it’s just the child and the screen, and no interaction with another person. It gets more difficult as kids grow bigger because parents don’t have the same power anymore,” says Nina.
“One nurse told me she sees many parents [engaged] with their phones but not their children. The outcome of that is the same as if the child had a severely depressed parent, because he is not present. She says, ‘I tell parents this and they are a bit shocked.’ The best thing would be if there was another grown-up or parent interacting with the kid as they watch what’s on the screen. They could comment together, similar to learning with books.”
This article first appeared on Jul 1, 2024 in The Edge Malaysia
