Children’s voluntary summer reading in Norway: Insights gained from the gamified library-initiated reading campaign Sommerles.no

Abstract

Using gamification, the Norwegian library-initiated summer reading program Sommerles.no (lit: Summer reading.no) entices one-fifth of Norway’s primary school students to read for pleasure during their summer vacation. The current paper explores the characteristics of the 105,319 participants of the 2018 edition of Sommerles.no. This analysis demonstrates that the campaign is a success in terms of overall participation and, especially, in terms of the share of boys who participated (43%). However, the participation of children who speak Sámi and non-Western European languages at home is under-represented. Children who speak Russian or other Western-European languages than Norwegian at home have the highest registered number of pages read, whereas children from non-Western European language backgrounds read fewer pages. As reading for pleasure during the summer most probably represents the most effective strategy for the groups with weak reading capabilities, the reading campaign has the potential to increase participation by these weak groups further.

Keywords

• reading program
• reading for pleasure
• gamification
• gender differences
• differences in home language