On its 10th anniversary, Book Dash harnesses publishing innovations to print its 4-millionth picture book

Heading: The power of the page

Subheading: Buying books for children could improve literacy rates, socio-emotional development and parent-child bonding — and ultimately disrupt cycles of inequality

Quote: When very young children read and share books with their caregivers, they develop essential skills that form the foundation of learning to read and write ... Just as crucially, this experience builds positive associations with books and reading, often called a “scholarly orientation”, that persists throughout life — Julia Norrish, Book Dash executive director

Early book ownership (before the age of five) supports school readiness, reading skills and overall academic success — which ultimately fuels economic growth and reduces inequality.

But in South Africa, two-thirds of homes with young children do not have a single picture book. This means most children enter school without important early home-learning experiences.

For a decade, Book Dash, an award-winning social impact publisher, has been working to turn that reality around.

As it celebrates its 10th anniversary this month, Book Dash is hitting a crucial milestone: printing its 4-millionth book. That’s enough to give one book to almost every child aged 0 to three in South Africa.

To get there, Book Dash has reimagined traditional publishing processes to find fairer, better and cheaper ways to get great African storybooks into young children’s hands and homes.

“Books and publishing play a crucial role in addressing poor literacy rates. We need to get books into children’s hands as soon as possible, and traditional publishing methods were not going to turn the situation around quickly enough,” says Julia Norrish, executive director of Book Dash. “Previously, it would have been too time-consuming and far too expensive to create and print enough books for all children to own — and whole generations of children would continue to grow up without books. That’s why Book Dash was founded 10 years ago. The model increases efficiencies in how we publish books for all children. This tackles inequality early on by making sure exponentially more books are getting to the children who need them the most.”

This month, Book Dash embarked on its largest-ever print run with longtime partner Tandym Print: 609,000 books printed in one go, almost double anything it has done before. It may even be the biggest-ever print run of children’s picture books in South Africa. These books are being printed in 11 official languages and are bound for more than 200,000 children in all nine provinces. This print run takes Book Dash over the 4-million-books mark.

But this is not enough. There are almost 7-million children aged 0 to five in South Africa, and a severe shortage of books among this age group:

• Two-thirds of homes with young children do not have a single picture book, and only 10% of homes with young children have more than 10 children’s books. (National Reading Survey 2023)
• Only 32% of parents of children aged 0 to six read or share books with them. (Unicef 2023)
• For most children, a Book Dash book is the first one they have ever owned; nationally, only 31% of adults say their child owned even one book by the age of five. (National Reading Survey 2023)
• Only 56% of preschools have access to age-appropriate children’s books (ECD Census 2021), and half of South Africa’s young children do not attend an early learning programme at all (Ilifa Labantwana calculations).

What these statistics mean is that most children are ill-prepared for school and struggle to learn to read. “When very young children read and share books with their caregivers, they develop essential skills that form the foundation of learning to read and write. They learn how to hold a book, and how text works on the page. Their vocabulary grows, and they start to recognise letters and sounds. They build their comprehension skills and critical thinking,” says Norrish. “Just as crucially, this experience builds positive associations with books and reading, often called a ‘scholarly orientation’, that persists throughout life. But most children are arriving at school without these experiences. This makes it much harder for the education system to teach children how to read and write. Intervening earlier, with books for all children to own, can save time and costs later on.” In South Africa:

• Just 55% of children attending early learning programmes are on track in emergent literacy and language by age five (Thrive by Five Index 2022), and those who do not attend preschool are often further behind.
• 81% of children in grade 4 cannot read for meaning in any language. (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2021)

Amid broader calls for more investment in early childhood development, Book Dash is entering its second decade with a strong call to action: more investment in physical books for children from birth to age five to own at home could improve literacy rates, socio-emotional development and parent-child bonding, and ultimately disrupt cycles of inequality.

Global and local research shows that:

• Children aged three to five with at least one picture book at home were nearly twice as likely to be on track in early literacy and numeracy than children with no books, according to a 35-country study.
• Children growing up with many books complete three more years of schooling than children with no books, regardless of their parents’ education, occupation and class, a 27-country study including South Africa has found.
• When children own books, they are more interested in reading and have better literacy-related skills before and during their early school years.
• When parents have books at home, they are much more likely to read with children.
• Children who received free books at nine months had better reading, writing, spelling and maths skills at ages five and seven. 

“Book ownership is an incredibly powerful and cost-effective intervention,” says Norrish. “A number of other countries have programmes to distribute books to young children, and these have really positive results. There’s no one-step solution to our education crisis, but making sure all children have books in their homes from an early age has clear return-on-investment potential, which saves costs down the line.”

This call to increase book ownership has been echoed by Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga, who encouraged parents to get books for their children at the launch of the National Reading Survey last year. “I think the pride of having your own book [as a child] is something we must also raise consciousness of among parents […] the pride of just saying ‘this is my book’ [is important].”