Background

Bookstart is a nation wide programme aiming at an early start of rhyming, story telling and book reading. Parents of baby’s (aged between 4 to 14 months) receive a BookStart case including a baby book, CD-rom with songs and flyers explaining how vital book sharing is.

Additionally, parents have free access to baby books in the local library and have the option to participate in parent meetings about book sharing organized by the library. A longitudinal quasi-experimental design is used to examine whether BookStart enhances home literacy activities and language development. Also tested is whether the project works the same for all children. It is possible that especially children with problematic behaviour benefit most from the intervention.

Video interview

The first results of the programme are described in this video interview:

• bookstart
• early literacy
• reading comprehension
• storybook reading