| Summary: | The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to explore how libraries’ storytime for babies and toddlers can be construedas a reading promotion event which boosts early literacy, by ways of a multiple-case study of storytime at four public libraries in western Ireland. The study will also explore how the different libraries design these events and include different elements of traditional reading and storytelling, multimodal reading and technology, participation, and accessibility and inclusion through a sociocultural lens. The theoretical framework is constructed on the concepts and theory related to literacy development and reading promotion, and works as an analytical tool through which the empirical data collection will be examined. Data was collected through observations of storytimes at four public libraries in Ireland, as well as interviews with the involved librarians. The results show that although the librarians do not actively work to implement national and EU storytime templates, they offer programmes which are in tune with their participants’ needs, and invoke engagement and excitement about reading among children and parents or guardians alike.
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