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Children in Sweden are getting hooked on reading — but there’s still a big gender gap.
Seven years ago, I travelled to Chile to write my debut novel. That book changed my life. Since then, I am often contacted by young people who say that my stories made them start reading. Or by parents who tell us that their son or daughter is sitting bent over a book for the first time. Every such email makes me weak at the knees and childishly proud.
Four or five years ago, I was at a high school in Sundsvall, a town of 60,000 in the northern parts of Sweden. In front of me were around 250 students. I asked how many of them read books in their spare time. One girl raised her hand. Since then I realised that something must be done to counteract that development.
I am a former journalist who writes crime novels and I research my books as if I were still a journalist. The books I write cover a variety of criminal environments — from the underworld of organised crime to the digital universes of right-wing extremists and incels. The last of which is the topic of Femicide, my first book to be released in the UK on 22nd September.
Extremism and crime is fed by exclusion and alienation for which I think reading can be a cure. Of course, a lot of factors play in when people, especially young men, are drawn into destructive environments and behaviours. But I am convinced that decreased reading and poor literacy among young people in the longer run contribute to all of the problems that I portray in my books, as reading is shown to increase empathy and understanding.
When Sweden was modernised during the first half of the 20th century, the democratisation of language was one of the guiding principles. Language is a key to society and must not become a class issue.
Therefore I started my own foundation, called the Pascal Engman Foundation, to promote reading among children and young people in Sweden and to pay tribute to the unsung literacy heroes in Sweden. Every year, the foundation, together with a nomination committee, awards a scholarship to a person who has had gone above and beyond to improve young people’s reading. The nominees are often school librarians and teachers as well as book bloggers or organisers at non-governmental organisations. One common trait of the nominees is that a large majority — around 85% — are women.
Boys who do not have such advantages at home or in their immediate environment also need to meet grown men who value language use, reading, literature and journalism. Otherwise, they will feel that it is not for them
Our first winner, Anneli Glamsare, had worked for 40 years in a socio-economically challenged area called Botkyrka on the outskirts of Stockholm. She wanted all of Botkyrka’s children on summer vacation to read more in their free time and keep reading alive, even when they are not at school as over the holidays, children from more affluent homes keep developing their reading skills and interests, while others, from less affluent backgrounds, stand completely still in their development. Today, Anneli’s project has expanded into many areas of Sweden and is now an annual feature. The result has been striking. At Anneli’s local library, the lending of children’s and youth literature has increased by 603%.
Our second and most recent winner Eva Holmström had worked for three decades in a library in Söråker (Söråkers Folkets Hus), not far from the school I visited in Sundsvall that made me realise, I had to do something to improve literacy in Sweden. Her library stays open until midnight on some days and every six-year-old in the local community receives their own library card, a tradition which every new generation has been introduced to.
The work with the foundation has made it clear to me how many fantastic reading promoters there are. But it has also become evident, perhaps unsurprisingly, that when 85% of the role models who make an effort to make children read are women, that means less than a fifth are men. A perception confirmed by everyone I have spoken to in both Sweden and the UK.
Without male role models, it is not difficult to see the connection to men lagging behind in reading comprehension and in school in general. Rampant serious crime and extremism show the dangers that arise where popular education doesn’t have a place. In its vacuum, something else arises. Last year I became a parent for the first time. My son, Benjamin, is privileged enough to have both a mother who, like so many other mothers, actively reads to him and will support him in his own reading development throughout life, but also a father for whom the task comes just as naturally.
But all those boys who do not have such advantages at home or in their immediate environment also need to meet grown men who value language use, reading, literature and journalism. Otherwise, they will feel that it is not for them. The boys who end up on the edges of society will be even higher in numbers, the gap in school results compared to the girls will continue to grow.
To democratise language in the 21th century, I don’t think we can fight new technology, we need to find ways to work together with it. BookTok is a great example of that. Reading promotion is best implemented on a broad front: culturally, technologically, politically and economically. This is a question that deserves much more discussion and needs to be higher up on the agenda in the UK, in Sweden, and all over the world.
My foundation is still quite new, we have started small and on our home turf. I am curious to learn more about reading promotion in the UK and hopefully one day also spread our activities here. Do you have anything to teach me about this? My Instagram DMs are always open.