About Book Dash
Book Dash is a not-for-profit, South African social impact publisher of open, African picturebooks for very young children. Based on evidence, our vision is that “Every child should own a hundred books by the age of five”, long before they enter school!
Getting relevant, quality books into the homes of very young children and families is an evidence-based way to support all aspects of a child’s lifelong development and increase positive parenting practices. The earlier we start, the more the benefits compound.
Find some Book Dash book-specific activities here and find tips for reading with young children, available in 11 South African languages, here.
More about Book Dash
How we do it: Our Model
- Book creation
- Book Dash team
- Free online library
- South African translations
- Book printing
- Funding partners
- Book distribution
Printing and distributing the books
Printing the books
One of the great advantages of the open license is that anyone in the world is able to print out their own copies of the Book Dash books by downloading the print-ready files and sending them to a local print/copy shop. And we strongly encourage this!
Some individuals/organisations print the books exactly like they are, and others translate them into their local language before printing. We would absolutely love that and we can provide you with a bulk download link to easily retrieve all Book Dash book files or send you just the files you need.
Research shows that owning books is a key factor in holistic early development and lifelong academic and economic success: the effect of owning books outweighs a child’s socio-economic status and is equaled only by parents’ level of education. Working together to increase the number of books in very young children’s homes, we could effectively disrupt a cycle of inequality for good.