family reading habits

The “My First Pages” project was launched by a local authority in Braga, northern Portugal, with the initial goal of fostering early contact with books and children’s literature among children aged 0 to 10, encouraging parental involvement in promoting family reading habits. Implemented through voluntary family registration, and supported by a range of public and private partners (including hospitals, health centres, libraries, and post offices) books are distributed periodically to participating children. This paper presents the initiative as a distributive public policy and critically examines its evaluation process, conducted by education researchers from the University of Minho in close collaboration with the project coordinator. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, the evaluation draws on data from an interview with the project lead, as well as socio-cultural profiling of participating families and their reading practices, obtained through a questionnaire completed during the registration phase.