Non-fiction or fiction : a study of borrowing habits among third-grade pupils in a village located in north of Sweden

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the habits of borrowing books among third-grade pupils. My aim is also to study what significance their teacher and the librarian have on the pupils’ borrowing habits. Based on the results from an experiment, two observations, interviews and by compiling a list of short summaries of literature relevant to my thesis. I wanted to compare earlier research with my own results and also reflect on remarks made by librarians and teachers concerning the children’s reading and use of the library. The study shows that the pupils borrow fiction literature in most cases. Their habits during the spring term of 2000 seemed to have changed. Those who every third week regularly visited the branch library with their teacher, seemed to have found their genres. The girls preferred to read about animals and sports, while the boys were only attracted by books on sports. The method the teacher had chosen while teaching, was to let her pupils read regularly using fiction literature, as a main thread. I believe the pupils have reached the age where they consume a large amount of books. Fiction literature is the sole source of books in this particular class. Furthermore, I concluded that the most important person to the pupils, when trying to increase and maintain their desire to read, was their teacher. However, my research also showed that the librarian was important to the teacher for giving suggestions on good novels and learns how to present those in an interesting way. Thus, the teacher acts as an intermediary between books and readers.Uppsatsnivå: