In an effort to foster a love of reading, the Netherlands’ largest mobile phone company, Odido, has partnered with a Dutch nonprofit to create a telephone book for kids.

Not your typical Yellow Pages: “Het Telefoonboekje” (“The Telephone Book”)

Recognizing the change in children’s attention spans with the increasingly pervasive use of cellphones, the Netherlands Education Ministry recently initiated a cellphone ban in primary school classrooms.

Instead of pushing back against the restrictions, which might hurt its interests as a cell service provider, Odido is encouraging kids to spend less time on screens and more time with books. To do this, the company teamed up with CPNB (Collective Promotion for the Dutch Book, an organization that “promotes Dutch literature”) and enlisted the help of children’s book author Marjon Hoffman to create a first-of-its-kind “telephone book.”

Manufactured to resemble a smartphone – complete with chat-style text, the book was made to help “bridge the gap between [kids’] digital inclinations and the tactile and immersive experience of reading longer-form texts on paper.” Currently, the book is freely available for Dutch elementary school teachers and can be read by most students in about 25 minutes. So far, it is estimated that is has “contributed to 1,375,000 minutes of reading time.”

Students’ response

According to TrendWatching, the book’s first print run ran out within 24 hours and over 50,000 editions have been delivered since its release date. Survey results also seem promising, as initial statistics show that after reading “The Telephone Book,” 8 out of 10 students claim they are interested in reading more books in the future.

Eveline Aendekerk, director of the CPNB recently shared about the initiative:

“We are pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming interest from primary school teachers in ‘Het Telefoonboekje.’ But even more encouraging is the fact that children appreciate it so much, which in turn increases their enjoyment of reading. All in all, a very successful initiative. We hope that the phone ban in primary schools will also contribute to improving children’s reading skills and, consequently, their reading pleasure.”

Hopefully, “The Telephone Book” will inspire more authors to create new interactive reading material and further increase the number of students interested in reading, as currently less than 35% of Dutch students over age 12 read a book daily, and 33% of Dutch 15-year-olds receive low scores in their reading proficiency skills.

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