20 years of Bookstart celebrated at IBBY Congress

Rosemary Clarke, Majo de Saedeleer, Wendy Cooling, Izumi Satou and Viv Bird (l-r) at the IBBY Congress event

Speakers at IBBY International Congress explain how they were inspired by Bookstart to gift books to babies in Belgium and Japan

Two of our international affiliates, Izumi Satou from Bookstart in Japan and Majo de Saedeleer from Boekbaby's in Belgium, were joined on a panel chaired by Wendy Cooling, founder of the Bookstart programme, which also featured our CEO Viv Bird and director of programmes Rosemary Clarke MBE.

Changing attitudes with the gift of a book

Wendy kicked off the discussion by recalling why Bookstart was founded 20 years ago:

We wanted parents to read to their children, in the womb preferably, but certainly immediately after they were born. And we realised that there were a lot of homes where this was not happening, where there were no books. It seemed to me that if we wanted parents to read to their children, we needed to give them books. And sometimes the giving is essential to begin to get attitudes to change. So that's what Bookstart is about.

Spreading a love of books around the world

Izumi and Majo then outlined how their programmes work today in Japan and Belgium respectively. Izumi was introduced to Bookstart in 1999, whereupon she simply 'fell in love with it'. Determined to start something similar in Japan, she piloted a small programme in Tokyo, with help from Wendy and Rosemary. Since then, Bookstart in Japan has expanded to cover nearly half of the country, gifting books to 430,000 babies every year.

In Belgium, since piloting in 2005, Boekbaby's has been growing steadily over the last seven years. Two packs are delivered to families with babies; the first is collected from a health care centre, reaching 90% of families. The second pack is for toddlers aged 15 months, available from the local library.

'I think that's an essential part,' explains Majo. 'Getting libraries involved works towards long term effects.' There are over 300 free public libraries in Belgium, who take care to accommodate their young visitors.

Bouncing back after the tsunami

Izumi showed what Bookstart can mean to local communities by explaining how, in the aftermath of last year's tsunami, the ravaged Japanese city of Rikuzentakata ensured the programme was quickly reinstated. Librarians, community members and other development workers rallied so that Bookstart was up and running just six months after the disaster.

Izumi recounted how one baby, whose parents had died in the disaster, collected his Bookstart pack with his grandparents. They expressed their deep thanks for the programme - with their lives upturned and having lost everything, the gift of books for their grandson represented a return to normality and a new hope for the future. Izumi explained, 'Bookstart was really appreciated because they could take something back home for the child to keep, and start creating happy memories,'.

Hope for the future

When asked about the future, Rosemary hoped most of all for Bookstart to secure ongoing funding, both for our 'universal' programme (the Baby and Treasure packs that are available to every baby and preschool child), as well as our 'targeted' programme, Bookstart Corner. Aimed at toddlers from socially disadvantaged families and delivered in partnership with children's centres, this new initiative offers intensive support to families so that every child can develop a love of stories and rhymes.

Rosemary stressed how Bookstart Corner can help make the difference for families:

'All the gifts are given at home - we must remember that some families don't want to go to the health clinic or the library [...] One of the wishes is, at the end of the four home visits, to say to the family, "Have you thought about going to the library?" It's a warm engagement - it's a bit like having your hand held over the threshold into the library.'

From the session, it was clear how far Bookstart has come since its beginning in 1992. Rosemary recalled how sharing books with babies in the early 1990s was not a common idea. And partly as a result of Bookstart, a baby that has no experience of a book today is an exception - a tremendous result for our 20-year-old programme.

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