The Young Reading Council Handbook
The Young Reading Council Handbook is filled with inspiration, examples, ideas and concrete methods for changing the negative literacy trend among teens - with teenagers as key collaborators, not as a problem to be solved.
In an effort to turn the negative literacy trend using young people's own expertise, interests och ideas, the Swedish National Lautreate / Reading Ambassador Agnes Török (2024-2026) started the Young Reading Councils. A pilot project took place in three rural areas with very different challenges, collaborations and circumstances.
Across many countries and contexts, we are seeing a negative literacy trend among children and young people. Many initiatives focus on toddlers and young children, a key demographic to establishing the foundations for literacy, but stop around the age when we are losing many previous readers.
Many teens and young people stop reading in their spare time around the age of 13-15, this trend also includes previously voracious readers who earlier in life gladly read for fun.
Just as important as making every child a reader is the mission to make sure every teen and young adult stays a reader, not just for school - but for life.
Turning the negative literacy trend is not just important for individual teenagers' schooling or work prospects, but for their ability to engage critically with sources, analyse text and subtext, to tell apart information and disinformation. In short - the next generations' ability to participate in democracy.
The Young Reading Council method centers reading promotion, democratic participation, creativity and reading as empowerment for, with and by teenagers in rural areas.
The Young Reading Council Handbook is filled with inspiration, examples, ideas and concrete methods for changing the negative literacy trend among teens - with teenagers as key collaborators, not as a problem to be solved.