Bookdash
| This article is about Children's literature, Reading and |
| Social Impact Publishing |
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Book Dash[1] is a social impact publisher (SIP) which works with volunteer creatives, to make beautiful and professional picture books. Book hunger is a pervasive problem world wide.[2] In South Africa, a national reading survey indicated that 25% of South African households, had no books.[3]
Book Dash is a non profit organization that seeks to address the absence of reading books in homes.[4] This small team envisions a country of book owners, and children with bookshelves filled with books or phones laden with epubs. Literacy development is shaped by practice, within institutions and in communities. [5] In many schools, reading is seen as "oratorical" [6] and this mode of teaching reading is pervasive. Reading is thus understood as an oral performance, with little attempt to encourage comprehension or make sense of what has been written.[7]
The Book Dash project would like all children to experience the individual pleasure of story reading,[8] both home and at school. They have been working hard for 10 years to reach the goal of a child owning 100 books.[9] Unlike the commercial publishing industry, where books take a long time to produce, are expensive market and profit-driven,[10] this particular SIP has re-imagined publishing, and they are motivated by what will have the greatest impact on South African society. Ideally, these openly published books could be used to encourage questions, observe individual's comprehension, rather than simply "barking at text".[11]
Book creation, production and distribution
The book creation model that Book Dash follow has similarities to Booksprints model,[12] where, under guidance, a book group of experts take a few days to design, edit and illustrate a unique PDF or EPUB. At Book Dash creation events, a children's books is created over a 12 hour period (one day).[13] The story books are published under a Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) License. The implications of open publishing are enormous. Those with data, a device and a few skills, can download, re-use and adapt these children's books and translate them. Openly licensed books means exponential access to reading materials.[10]
References
[edit]- ^ "Book Dash | New, African storybooks by volunteer creatives". Book Dash. Retrieved 2025-01-30.
- ^ "Home". Ending Book Hunger. Retrieved 2025-03-14.
- ^ "Survey | National Reading Barometer South Africa". www.readingbarometersa.org. Retrieved 2025-03-14.
- ^ "Index", Ending Book Hunger, Yale University Press, pp. 201–209, 2020-02-18, doi:10.12987/9780300249316-016, ISBN 978-0-300-24931-6, retrieved 2025-03-14
- ^ Norton, Bonny (2010-11-03). "Identity, Literacy, and English-Language Teaching". TESL Canada Journal: 1–1. doi:10.18806/tesl.v28i1.1057. ISSN 1925-8917.
- ^ Rule, Peter; Land, Sandra (2017-09-07). "Finding the plot in South African reading education". Reading & Writing. 8 (1): 8. doi:10.4102/rw.v8i1.121. ISSN 2308-1422.
- ^ Rule, Peter (2017-12-08). "South Africa has a reading crisis: why, and what can be done about it". The Conversation. Retrieved 2025-03-14.
- ^ Metelerkamp, Tamsin (2024-05-31). "Success stories: How Book Dash is getting SA children reading". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ^ "Book Dash". hundred.org. 2019-04-30. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ^ a b Bookdash (17 September 2024). "Story time: Book Dash shares five new books to get kids reading".
- ^ Fleisch, Brahm (2023-08-10). "Theory of Change and Theory of Education: Pedagogic and Curriculum Defects in Early Grade Reading Interventions in South Africa". Education as Change. 27. doi:10.25159/1947-9417/13316. ISSN 1947-9417.
- ^ "Home". Book Sprints. Retrieved 2025-01-30.
- ^ Metelerkamp, Tamsin (2024-05-31). "Success stories: How Book Dash is getting SA children reading". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 2025-01-30.
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