About us

Association Read! – Foreningen !les

The leading provider of literature for children and adolescents in Norway.

Association Read! is a non-profit association that was established in 1997.

Our goal is to inspire children, adolescents and adults to read more by:

making contemporary literature available for target groups,
giving children and adolescents an arena for reading, writing and having an opinion about literature,
giving teachers tools for working with contemporary literature in classrooms and in collaboration with students,
developing an intermediary role in schools and libraries,
drawing attention to reading role models.

Through our work we aim to give readers:

access to quality literature within different genres and in different formats,
channels for expressing their opinions and for critical reading and conversations about literature,
enhanced reading and writing skills,
better skills to reflect upon and put literature into a larger context,
help to establish good reading habits,
tools for making active use of literature in schools and libraries, at workplaces and during free time.

Association Read! takes readers seriously, regardless of gender, age, reading experience or geographic location. We work to make a broad range of latest Norwegian and translated publications available to everyone and, because we know it makes students want to read more. We work to give children and adolescents the opportunity to have an opinion about literature that has been written especially for them.

Association Read! connects readers and literature. We facilitate literary conversations and reading experiences. We work closely with children and adolescents, teachers and librarians, authors and publishers. We also have contact with literary organizations and networks in several European countries.

An overview of what we do:

Bookstart
Bokstart is an early bookgifting programme. Bookstart provides free books to families with small children to help families read together every day and inspire children to develop a love of books and reading. The initiative is inspired by Bookstart in the UK run by the reading charity BookTrust. The Association Read is currently running a Bookstart project in three districts in Oslo (with around 2000 births per year). The public health nurse gives the parents a book when their baby is between eight and fifteen months. The book is a wordless picture book, and the idea is that parents can tell the story for the baby in their own language. They also hand out information about how to stimulate their baby’s language development and why it is important to build a relationship between parent and child through reading aloud from the earliest years. In 2019 we were awarded funds from the Danish Egmont Foundation. We will use the money to buy books that we can distribute through the family’s local library to all two-year-olds who are already part of the pilot project. At the same time, we will extend the pilot project to several other districts in Oslo. We also cooperate with three small municipalities in western Norway, so that we can learn how the Bookstart project works elsewhere in Norway with different demographics.

Read more here

Leseskogen (The Reading Forest). Is an reading aloud campaign for pupils at 1st and 2nd grade, their teachers and parents. The pupils will at the website leseskogen.no meet various animals who read and promote books. There will also be different activities related to the books at the website. Teachers will recieve suggestions on how to work with literature in classrooms and parents will find book tips and guidelines to increase their ability to read aloud and to create aloud reading situations together with their children.

Read more here

The Avid Reader Award (“Bokslukerprisen”) is a reading incentive award for 5^th-7^th grade students, focusing on the joy of reading. The first award ceremony was arranged in 2014. The participating classes receive anthologies of Norwegian novels written for the age group 10–12. Students read and vote for the best excerpts. The top five excerpts constitute the nominees for the award. Fifteen jury classes from across the country are assigned to read the nominated excerpts and to select a winner. During the reading period, jury classes are visited by a motivational speaker, who gives the students guidance on how they can become critical readers and how they can justify their opinions. The award ceremony for The Avid Reader Award takes place on World Book Day in April.

The award’s own website – bokslukerprisen.no – will provide more information, news, digital text excerpts, audio files, a teacher’s guide, competitions and bonus material.

Read more here

Bokprat (Book talk). Is a pilot at 7th grade aiming to use literature as a conversation starter to discuss challenging topics. Twelve schools around Norway will read books about different matters of bullying, create conversations about the book they´ve read and at the end of the reading period arrange a conversation with the author of the book.

The tXt Campaign (“tXt-aksjonen”) is the oldest and most extensive reading incentive for middle school students in Norway. The campaign was established in 1997, and has become a central part of student encounter with Norwegian and translated contemporary literature. Every year over 120,000 students participate, and they receive an anthology of excerpts from a variety of literary genres. The goal is to motivate the students to pick up the whole book the excerpts is collected from.

The campaign’s own website – txt.no – will provide more information, news, digital text excerpts, audio files, a teacher’s guide, competitions and bonus material as long as the campaign is running.

Read more here

The Norwegian Youth Literature Award (“Uprisen”) was established in 2007, and is a collaboration between Association Read!, The Norwegian Festival of Literature and “The Cultural Rucksack” (“Den kulturelle skolesekken”, a national programme for art and culture). This is the adolescents’ own award for the best teen book of the year. The adolescents are in charge of every part of the arrangement. Reviewer classes read and write reviews for every teenage book that has been published in the past year. Based on the reviews, five books are nominated. Eleven jury classes from schools across the country are assigned to read the nominated books and select a winner. During the reading period, the jury classes are visited by professional literary critics. Each year, in May, a grand jury with representatives from the seven school classes meet during The Norwegian Festival of Literature to discuss and select the winner of the award. The award ceremony takes place during The Festival of Literature, with all the jury classes and the nominated authors present. During the festival, the students also get to meet and have conversations with nominated authors. Association Read! follows participating students closely, and the jury classes and their teachers are invited to a seminar before the reading period begins.

The award’s own website – uprisen.no – will provide more information, news, book reviews and historical overview.

Read more here

Pure text (“Rein tekst”) is a reading incentive campaign program for high school students. Pure text was established in 2004 and is a gateway to the latest Norwegian and translated fiction, and non-fiction prose literature. Every year, nearly 40,000 students receive an anthology of excerpts from various books.

The campaign’s own website will provide digital text excerpts, audio files, a teacher’s guide, competitions, and bonus material.

Read more here

The Young Critics’ Award (“Ungdommens kritikerpris”) is a high school literary award that was established in 2005. A jury of professional critics nominates eight novels for adults, and seven jury classes are assigned to read and discuss the books within a period of four months. During the reading period, the classes are visited by professional critics. One week prior to the award ceremony, a grand jury with representatives from the jury classes meets in Oslo to agree upon who should win the award. The ceremony takes place in Oslo in March. The jury classes, the nominated authors, publishers, representatives from the media and the Minister of Education and Research are all present. After the ceremony, students get to meet and have conversations with nominated authors. Association Read! follows the jury classes closely and invites their teachers to attend a seminar in advance of the reading period.

The award’s own website – ungdommenskritikerpris.no – will provide further information, news and historical background.

Read more here

Other arenas:
In addition to our regular work and activities, we also work in other arenas. For example:

The Norwegian Poetry Slam Championship brings various expressions together, live from stage, and this creates a spontaneous interaction between participants and the audience. Participants must present their own texts within a maximum of three minutes, and without props. Juries in the audience award points to participants based on their performance skills. Association Read! initiated the first Norwegian Poetry Slam Championship in 2005. We arrange the semi-finals in collaboration with local literary festivals. Every year, in November, the finale is arranged in Oslo. A workshop for the Slam-finalists is arranged in advance of the finale. The winner is invited to participate in the European Poetry Slam Championship and the Poetry Slam World Championship.

Visit the website poesislam.no for more information.

Hat Trick – Literature and sports was established in 2012 in cooperation with The Norwegian Football Association (NFF) and the library sector. Through this project we bring reading agents and literary representatives and material into the sports arena. We facilitate literary encounters between reading agents, sports clubs and young athletes. A part of the project is to focus on athletic role models who enjoy reading, and to give presentations on the subject “Sports and reading”.

Visit https://foreningenles.no/formidling/idrett/om-hat-trick for more information.

Sports and Reading (2006-2008) was a project where we moved literature out of libraries and into sports arenas to make books and literary presentations available for young athletes. Several seminars were arranged, and librarians and representatives from the sports and literary sectors were present. Through a collaboration between literary agents, authors, and top performing athletes, several sports clubs were visited. The project motivated literary agents to engage in extensive information, and also motivated top athletes to read more and to be reading models for young athletes.

Visit the website https://foreningenles.no/formidling/idrett/idrett-og-lesing-2006-2008 for more information.

Read for me, Dad! (2009-2011) was a campaign where so called reading agents visited parent meetings at schools to talk about the value of reading aloud, and to introduce them to suitable books to read aloud from. Several seminars with reading agents were arranged, and 60,000 anthologies of suitable literature were distributed. The target group at this time was male.

Visit the website https://foreningenles.no/formidling/les-for-meg-pappa/rapport-av-prosjektet for more information.

Lost in translation (2008-2011) was a campaign established to create positive and pleasurable encounters between adolescents with multicultural backgrounds, and literature. During the project period, seminars were arranged in Oslo, Tønsberg and Tromsø. Three selected texts from the anthologies in the “tXt Campaign” and “Pure Text” were even translated into Urdu, Somali and Arabic. This project established positive attitudes toward reading and literature. It also improved reading habits and skills in the target groups. Teenagers were engaged in the project to point out obstacles to reading enjoyment and how to overcome them. The campaign resulted in new experiences for both the schools and the literary environment in focus. Furthermore, in order to ensure cultural diversity in the literary environment in Norway, this initiative paved the way to future vocation in literature and publishing.

The Year of Reading Campaign 2005 and 2010. Association Read! initiated The Year of Reading in 2005. Eventually the campaign received funding from former ABM Development and the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training. The aim was to inspire people to read more and to introduce Norwegian literature to a larger audience. The aim was also to open adolescents to the world of books. Furthermore, one aim of The Year of Reading Campaign was to initiate projects that could also be maintained in the future. Through this campaign, Association Read! reached out to approximately 300,000 people. Several initiatives were established, and they are still important parts of our association’s work, including “Pure Text”, “The Youth Critics’ Award”, “Norwegian Poetry Slam Championship” and “Sports and Reading».

Association Read! had a central role in The Year of Reading 2010, which was arranged by the Department of Culture and The National Library in Norway. Throughout the year, several initiatives were carried out both within and outside of libraries, including workplaces, parent meetings in schools and other arenas where literature and literary pursuits are not as common. Two of the objectives of The Year of Reading 2010 were to enhance reading competency and interest in literature among adults with limited reading experience, and to bring attention to male readers as role models.

Visit the website https://foreningenles.no/formidling to read more about our initiatives in other arenas.

Foreningen !les
Øvre Slottsgate 3
0157 Oslo
Epost: les@foreningenles.no
Ph.: +47 941 29 000