‘The best story,a connection through time’: The role of family in shaping book culture across generations

Abstract

Using qualitative case studies drawn from a mixed-methods survey of 160 Australian participants, this article explores how books make family narratives and intergenerational experiences visible, and how, in turn, these family links interact with reader's behaviours and identities. While existing research focuses primarily on the impact of parents reading to their children, this study expands the concept of family literacy to include non-linear, multigenerational connections such as aunts, great-aunts, and other relations. The study found that eight generations of family members, across non-linear and intergenerational ties, were influential in participants’ reading histories. Family shapes reading not merely as a skill but as a social, material, and emotional practice embedded in everyday life. Books on home bookshelves become memory objects, identity markers, and connectors within families. In this context, books are valued not just for their content, but for their material and emotional significance.

Introduction

In media and cultural studies, everyday media practices – how people use and make meaning from media in the flow of daily life – have become a key site of inquiry (Hurdley 2006; Striphas, 2009; Williams, 2014). This article examines one such practice: how families engage with books not just as texts, but as emotionally charged media objects that carry memory, identity, and connection across generations. While research on children's literacy often centres on parent–child relationships, this study expands the scope of family literacy to include extended and non-linear familial networks, such as the roles played by aunts, great-aunts, and other relatives whose influence on reading culture is often overlooked. Viewed in this way, books can act as bridges, connecting readers to one another, to memories, and to the world around them. As such, many readers don't come to the page alone. They are brought to it by others: the voices of parents, the stories of grandparents, the guidance of teachers and other learning professionals, the shared moments with siblings or friends. And in turn, the page come to symbolise connections, memories, emotions, and a sense of belonging.

This article investigates the role of family in shaping reading practices by asking which family members influence the development of book culture how these actors shape reading practices, encompassing relational, material, and intergenerational dimensions.

Drawing on a mixed-methods survey of 160 Australian participants, this article positions reading as a shared media experience embedded in everyday life. Participants described inherited books, storytelling routines, and intergenerational reading spaces that extended well beyond the nuclear family, some spanning up to eight generations. Through these practices, books become not only tools for literacy, but memory objects, cultural heirlooms, and emotional anchors. This study contributes to media and cultural studies by illuminating how reading functions as a relational and affective practice.

I draw from two areas of literature. The first is family literacy scholars, from foundational work (e.g., Gadsden, 2004, 2012; Gregory et al., 2004; Johnson, 2010; Mui and Anderson, 2008; Taylor, 1983) to recent studies (e.g., Compton-Lily, 2023; Derby, 2021; Harris et al., 2020; Lynch and Prins, 2021; Sayekti and Ying, 2023; Wiseman et al., 2025), which continue to show that family is a vital cultural context for literacy learning. I approach family literacy as an intergenerational practice situated within the extended family, encompassing relationships within the nuclear family as well as with other relatives. The second area literature is drawn from is book culture studies, which provides various socio-cultural accounts shared reading practices, including those of Rehberg Sedo (2011), Murray (2021), and Darnton (1982). The transmission of book culture within families sits somewhat uneasily between the concerns of publishing studies and those of family literacy research. The former has historically focused on the development of literacy as a skill, rather than reading as a practice of pleasure, identity, or cultural inheritance, while the latter often privileges public, traceable reading networks, such as festivals, book clubs, and online communities. As such, the familial transmission of reading culture is acknowledged in both fields but leaves a valuable opportunity to explore how book culture, and not just literacy, is transmitted through everyday family life.

The study employs a mixed-methods design, including a survey distributed to 160 Australian participants to explore reading practices more broadly. During analysis, the role of family emerged as a central theme, prompting reflexive coding informed by family literacy scholarship. This approach allowed for the identification of intergenerational influences, including relationships within both nuclear and extended families.

The article analyses selected qualitative narratives to examine the intricate and often complex relationships within families and their influence on reading practices. These case studies reveal that the emotional and relational aspects of family life are crucial in understanding how books are shared, passed down, and experienced within the home. What emerges from these narratives is a challenge to dominant models of literacy that foreground schools or individual motivation. Instead, this study invites us to look harder at families – not just parents, and not just mothers – as cultural actors who shape reading lives in complex and enduring ways.

Emotion, materiality, identity and belonging, memory and connection emerge as themes around book experience that initiate lifelong reading passions and act as ongoing motivators along the way. The familial dimension of reading is crucial for academics, booksellers and educators to consider, particularly for younger generations experiencing declining literacy and a diminishing pleasure in reading. By shifting the focus from the centrality of the text to the ways in which familial relationships shape our engagement with books, we can more effectively nurture the motivations that sustain reading across generations, ensuring that the love for books continues to thrive.

Literature review on family literacy

Family literacy encompasses the oral and written communications within families and their efforts to support children's literacy and language development, including the intergenerational transmission of literacy, while also reflecting the values, beliefs, and cultural practices of the family (Wasik and Van Horn, 2012). The term ‘family literacy’ was coined in 1983 by transdisciplinary scholar Taylor, whose influential ethnographic study of six families challenged prevailing assumptions about how children learn to read and write. Although the middle-class families appeared to have little explicit engagement with print – what Taylor described as a context in which ‘print is noticeably absent’ (Taylor, 1983, 90) – the study demonstrated that literacy was deeply embedded in the social practices of everyday family life rather than in formalised instructional activities (92–94). Taylor aruged that children's initiation into literacy was shaped less by direct teaching than by diffuse, relational, and moment-to-moment encounters with language, motivation and meaning-making, particularly through shared stories and socially situated uses of print (1983, 92–93, 98). The study was significant not because it offered a representative model, but because it reframed literacy acquisition as a social and cultural process, critiquing attempts to simulate literacy learning through decontextualised pedagogical interventions (Taylor, 1983, 93) and emphasising the importance of relational contexts in which print mediates family relationships (Taylor, 1983, 93–94). Contemporary approaches understand literacy as a learned, non-intuitive skill that requires instruction: a process that can be supported by social and cultural factors. Family literacy studies are therefore among the closest bodies of work to my own examination of families and books, although these studies tend to focus more narrowly on literacy acquisition and comprehension than on broader engagements with books as cultural objects.

While my focus shifts from literacy acquisition to the broader development of book culture, the field of family literacy still offers valuable conceptual tools. One such concept is ‘family culture’, which Gadsden (2004, 2012) develops to describe the political, cultural, and social histories that shape a family's shared beliefs and practices, which ‘eventually contribute to a core of meanings, beliefs, and practices that family members use to approach learning and to guide life activities’ (409). Moreover, ‘culture is not seen as a fixed core of traditions or as a predetermined set of restrictive or descriptive features. Although culture includes history and tradition, it also involves fluid, changing practices affected by context, time, and individual choice’ (Gadsden, 2004, 2012, 407). This view recognises that while cultural influence and shared histories shape family practices, they do not wholly determine them; individual agency, situational context, and change over time are equally important.

While most family literacy research centres on the parent–child relationship, studies have begun to extend this frame beyond the nuclear family. This broader view is important for my study, as participants described a much more comprehensive range of influential family members beyond parents. In this article, I discuss people in terms of the roles mentioned by participants (e.g., parents, grandparents, other family members). These roles, along with many others, are encompassed by the category of ‘caregivers’. Gregory, Long, and Volk edited a collection focusing on the role of ‘invisible’ literacy teachers, such as ‘siblings, grandparents, friends or other important cultural and linguistic mediators in their communities’ (2004, 20). Gregory, Long, and Volk write that ‘within a sociocultural framework, young children learn as apprentices (original emphasis) alongside a more experienced member of the culture’ (2004, 7). They identify the role of the mediator – ‘a teacher, adult, more knowledgeable sibling or peer’ – in initiating children in these new practices (2004, 7). From this sociocultural perspective, ‘learning…occurs in coparticipation and is mediated by others. It is embedded in social relationships’ (2004, 9). This sociocultural understanding of learning as co-participatory and relational strongly aligns with my own findings, where family members – across generations and roles – act as mediators of book culture. This perspective resonates with sociocultural theory, which emphasises that learning and literacy are socially and culturally mediated, rather than simply transmitted from parent to child (Vygotsky, 1978), and with contemporary sociocultural approaches that consider reading and bookish practices as socially and culturally mediated, shaped by interaction and shared meaning-making (Murray, 2021; Rehberg Sedo, 2011).

Mui and Anderson (2008) used a single case study to study the influence of cousins, aunts, and nannies on children's reading cultures. Drawing on the work of Taylor (1983), they emphasise that ‘different family members, not just parents, play a role’ in developing literacy, in a complex set of interactions that are not just the unidirectional transmission of reading and writing skills (Mui and Anderson, 2008, 240). This, they note, is despite the prominent image of a mother reading to her young children, calling for a greater awareness of these other family members and more inclusive language when discussing home-school interactions and support (Mui and Anderson, 2008, 240–2). Mui and Anderson also note that shared book reading is a ‘mainstream, middle class literary practice, foreign to many cultures that value oral storytelling and other forms of literacy’ (Mui and Anderson, 2008, 240). Taken together, these insights underscore the importance of examining diverse family members’ contributions to literacy, which the present study addresses through its analysis of intergenerational influences.

Johnson (2010) studies the cultures surrounding the development of literacy in her case study of KiKi Reynolds, the youngest member of the US-based Jones family. The family includes KiKi's great-grandmother, great-aunt, and cousin. Johnson finds that literacy was used for a wide range of purposes, including ‘connecting with each other, sustaining family practices, contributing to their local community, making sense of life, and doing good for other members of the family’ (2010, 41). Moreover, Johnson highlights fundamental family values, suggesting that ‘literacy is uplifting and empowering, important for building relationships with others, a potential pastime, and a practice accomplished with others’ (2010, 41). These values, she argues, were ‘not isolated within individual family members, but are a shared framework that members of the Jones family pass on to one another’ (Johnson, 2010, 41). Johnson likens these familial values to a ‘metaphorical backpack’ carried by Johnson (2010: 33). This ‘metaphorical backpack’ metaphor powerfully captures how not only literacy skills but also fundamental family values and attitudes toward books are passed down, shaping a cultural legacy that informs how each generation engages with reading and storytelling.

Taken together, these studies illustrate that family is a complex and multi-generational influence on literacy and book-related practices, extending well beyond the parent-child dyad. They show that literacy, and by extension book culture, is socially mediated, co-participatory, and shaped by values, relationships, and cultural histories, while still allowing for individual agency and personal engagement. At the same time, much of this research remains limited in scale, often focusing on single families or small case studies, and primarily emphasises literacy skill development rather than the broader cultivation of book culture and lifelong reading behaviours. In line with family literacy research, which is frequently qualitative and occasionally limited to single-case studies, this article focuses on selected qualitative survey responses to explore the diversity of intergenerational influence on book culture.

Literature review on publishing studies and book history

Publishing studies and book history are less interested in literacy and the pedagogical outcomes of reading than educational studies, and more concerned with the production, dissemination and consumption of print materials. Publishing studies and book history examine the social and industrial dynamics surrounding publishing and reading, conceptualising them as communities (Rehberg Sedo, 2011, 1), circuits (Darnton, 1982, 76), and networks (Murray, 2021, 1). These terms tend to be used largely interchangeably yet they carry different emphases and theoretical implications: communities emphasise social belonging, circuits focus on the movement of texts, and networks highlight relational connections. Though conceived differently, these theories recognise that reading and bookish culture is a ‘social process and a social formation’ (Rehberg Sedo, 2011, 1).

Considerable research has explored how reading circulates within these visible and structured communities, including book clubs (Fuller and Rehberg Sedo, 2013; Long, 2003; Radway, 1997), festivals (Dane, 2020; Driscoll, 2015; Parnell et al., 2021; Throsby et al., 2022; Weber, 2018), and online communities (Murray, 2018). These studies demonstrate that books are inherently social: readers enjoy sharing, discussing, and performing their engagement with texts, often in ways that build community and signal cultural participation. Such scholarship demonstrates that not only that books circulate socially, but that these social interactions shape readers’ choices, identities, and cultural capital. These visible networks are often middle-class, feminised, institutional, or interest specific. These contexts lend themselves to study because they announce themselves: they are institutional, performative, and traceable. They create observable and often celebrated networks.

In contrast, the role of the family in transmitting reading culture remains comparatively underexamined. Families constitute a quieter, often less publicised influence on readers. The transmission of book culture at home is frequently unrecorded and unremarked upon. It falls within the remit of ‘everyday book culture’, which refers to:

A range of run-of-the-mill meanings, values, practices, artifacts and ways of life associated with books. These characteristics are the “givens” of book culture, as it were. Their familiarity often makes them recede into the deep background of experiences so that at first glance—maybe even after a second look—they’re apt to seem boring or unremarkable. (Striphas, 2009, 9–10)

It is precisely this ordinariness and subtlety that makes family literacy both essential and methodologically elusive. While socio-cultural studies of readers have illuminated public and institutionalised networks, family networks reveal how reading circulates in everyday, affective, and intergenerational contexts. These networks often encompass a range of relationships – from parents to grandparents and extended relatives – and include practices, preferences, and literacies that do not always align with mainstream or performative norms (Mui and Anderson, 2008; Striphas, 2009). Attending to these hidden networks expands our understanding of the social nature of reading, demonstrating that circulation, influence, and engagement occur not only in public or performative spaces but also within the private and ordinary realms of family life.

Methods

Survey design and distribution

This article draws on a mixed-methods survey conducted in 2021, which asked Australians about their home bookshelves and the meanings they attach to them. This study takes the home bookshelf as a point of entry to examine the relational, cultural, behavioural, and industrial dimensions of book culture.

The survey was framed by an interest in everyday book culture. Just as Hurdley (2006) demonstrates how mantelpieces serve as symbolic sites of memory and identity within domestic life, this study shows how bookshelves function as curated material spaces that hold and transmit familial narratives across generations. The domestic bookshelf is an everyday media that makes apparent the material and relational contexts in which books are kept, handled, and remembered. The curation and journey of objects onto bookshelves often tells a story as rich as the texts themselves.

The survey contained 28 questions, including both closed and open-ended items. It explored what objects people keep on their bookshelves, how they organise them, and where bookshelves are located in the home. Sample items included questions such as ‘How many bookshelves do you have in your home?’, ‘Where are your bookshelves located?’, and ‘How do you organise the objects on your bookshelves?’. It also included questions about whether participants discuss or share their bookshelves with others in their household, and whether they include objects inherited from or gifted by others – questions which point to the relational dimensions of reading culture.

The survey was distributed online and circulated via social media and informal networks. This approach allowed for snowballing (Silverman, 2021, 72) and allowed for a wide geographic reach across all states and territories in Australia. Participants were eligible if they were over 18. A total of 160 people completed the survey from every state and territory in Australia participated in the survey and counted 977 bookshelves in their homes, at an average of around six bookshelves per home. However, there was no standardisation to the ‘bookshelf’, so this number is a rough guide. Their ages ranged from 19 to 76, with a mean age of 44. Of the participants, 134 identified as female, 25 as male, and one as non-binary female. While this demographic spread was not the result of targeted recruitment, the sample yielded rich diversity in household arrangements, life stages, and relationships to reading. The purpose of the study was framed as a general exploration of domestic reading culture and reader's behaviours.

Data analysis

The qualitative data in this article is mainly derived from a narrative methodology question in the survey. The question asked: ‘Please select an object (a book, object linked to books, other object) from your bookshelf and share its story. For instance, where did it come from? Where do you keep it? Why did you select it?’. Participants responded to this in writing via the online form. Responses varied in length from a few sentences to several paragraphs. These variations in length, tone, and depth offered a layered view of how people conceptualise their bookshelves and the objects they place on them. Some participants focused closely on reading material, while others offered broader personal or familial reflections. Although the question did not directly ask about family or social networks, references to family emerged organically and frequently. One limitation of this method is that asking participants to share a ‘story’ about a book on their bookshelf may have encouraged them to select particularly meaningful or relational examples. As such, the data may underrepresent books and reading experiences that are less emotionally or socially embedded.

Because my analysis was inductive, I did not begin with family as a predefined category. Instead, I examined how participants used their bookshelves and described the social relations surrounding them, allowing categories and meanings to emerge from the data through an inductive thematic coding process (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Inductive thematic analysis is a prominent qualitative framework widely used across media, audience, and literacy studies to examine every day cultural practices and meaning making. Inductive coding ‘refers to the process of gathering keywords with the purpose of creating an organized list of codes…generating codes from the data itself to allow patterns and themes to emerge from the real data’ (Naeem et al., 2023, 9). This approach, which allows the researcher to immerse themselves in the data and for themes to ‘emerge organically’, is ‘exploratory and data-driven', emphasising openness to new themes and ideas, and aligning with a constructivist paradigm that allows for 'the co-construction of knowledge between research and participants’ (Naeem et al., 2023, 9).

As I analysed the dataset, I noticed frequent references to family and subsequently returned to the data to examine these references in more detail. This involved identifying which family members were mentioned, how they were connected to particular books or objects, and whether more than one family group or household was present in a single response, consistent with iterative and reflexive approaches to qualitative analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). I recorded the range of relationships described, the number of generations represented, and the associated emotional responses, as well as whether family members were linked to particular experiences surrounding the book, such as buying it together on holidays, receiving it as a gift, or associating it with a shared event or memory. Through this process, I identified recurring themes and patterns relating to family across the dataset, including intergenerational continuity, memory and loss, and shared reading practices.

Informed by David Silverman's qualitative approach known as the ‘choreography of talk’, a method that encourages researchers to ‘analyze sequences of talk and attend to the narrative construction’ I attended not only to what participants said but also to how they structured their responses (2013, 54). I considered each response as a narrative: what was the arc, when was family introduced, and what impact did that introduction have on the emotional tone or meaning of the object? I analysed how objects were linked to people or events, whether specific family members or generalised ‘family’ were named, and the affective or identity significance of the story. This approach allowed me to analyse not just how participants positioned themselves in relation to the bookshelf and the people connected to it, but also to consider the narrative they were telling – recognising the story's beginning, middle, and end, and how the individuals involved acted as active players within it.

There is a risk in interpretation, as narratives are selective and constructed, and individuals can use narrative to ‘remember, argue, justify, persuade, engage, entertain, and even mislead’ (Riessman, 2008, 8). On the other hand, it is important to extend some trust to those who choose to participate in research. As Geraghty (2003, 143) argues, if you want to understand audiences, the simplest and most effective method is often to ask them directly. Trusting participants’ accounts helps keep research grounded in real experiences and prevents it from becoming overly theoretical or detached from the people it seeks to understand.

Conceptualising family: Methodological and analytical approach

Here, I outline the process through which family relationships in survey responses were identified, coded, and analysed. As this research is inductive, this process shaped my understanding of family and informed the way I discuss and define family concepts throughout the article.

Initially, I read each response closely, noting the relationships referenced and the associated emotional or relational significance, such as childhood, memory, grief, or shared experiences. These observations were organised in an Excel spreadsheet, which allowed for systematic numerical counting, visualisation, and comparison across participants.

Initial codes were organised by generation across eight generational categories, and then further broken down into familial relations within those generations. Once initial codes were recorded, I similar categories – for example, sister and step-sister – and were grouped together for thematic analysis, though they were also noted separately where necessary, as the full range of codes was too extensive to graph comprehensively. Broader thematic patterns were then identified, including intergenerational continuity, relational significance, and types of shared experiences around books. NVivo was used to support coding and grouping once these categories were identified, though Excel remained the primary tool for numerical summarisation and graphing.

Ambiguous references (e.g., ‘someone I cherish’) were excluded from generational counts but retained in thematic discussion to ensure the richness of participants’ narratives was preserved. Reliability and reflexivity were enhanced through repeated readings of the dataset and discussion of coding decisions with a colleague, ensuring consistency in categorisation and interpretation. This approach allowed for both quantitative description and qualitative interpretation of family's role in participants’ engagement with bookshelves.

My understanding of family, and the way it is discussed in this article, emerges from the coding and analytic process outlined above, shaped by participants’ responses and the patterns identified in the data. As Gadsden notes ‘families include a range of constellations and forms, defined by and interpreted within cultural practices, social mores, political events, and economic factors’ (2012: 151). A limitation of this study is that ‘family’ is understood and experienced differently by each participant. While I examined a range of family members and relationships, I did not limit the analysis to any single definition of family. Family is a flexible concept that differs between people, and I used the widest conceptualisation I can to be as inclusive as possible. This inclusive approach allows for a broad view of familial influence, but it also means that interpretations are shaped by participants’ subjective understandings and cannot be generalised to a single, fixed definition of family. These considerations inform how I discuss family throughout the article, ensuring that participants’ own experiences and interpretations remain central to the analysis.

Findings on family

Findings from this study revealed a broad and multi-generational web of relationships shaping how books and reading culture are shared and experienced, demonstrating the prevalence and diversity of family influence on participants’ reading lives. Of the 160 participants, 132 discussed the role of family in shaping their reading practices. Moreover, eight generations are represented in the dataset, with parents, followed by grandparents and respondents’ own generation, being identified as the most influential. These findings underscore the centrality of familial ties in shaping reading experiences while highlighting the diverse range of family members involved.

One hundred and twenty-one participants indicated that they shared bookshelves with family and/or had inherited items on their bookshelves. Eleven of the remaining 39 participants who did not check family in these questions mentioned family unprompted in the narrative methodology section of the survey discussed below. Thus, across these questions, 132 participants (or just over 82%) mentioned family. In the narrative methodology question alone, eighty participants (just over 50% of respondents to this question) mentioned family.

Across the dataset, eight generations were mentioned, from grandchildren to great-great-great grandparents. The involvement of eight generations is a significantly broader constellation of family than the usually considered nuclear family, showing a longitudinal and multi-directional impact that otherwise might be overlooked. The broader familial relationships mentioned, such as great-great grandparents or great-aunts, are non-linear and non-nuclear, meaning familial influence was shown to skip across generations and move sideways rather than always coming directly through immediate family.

As may be expected, parents were the most mentioned generation of family, with this category including parents, aunts, and uncles. The participant's grandparents’ generation, including great-aunts, was next, with nineteen mentions. It was closely followed by the participant's own generation, including partners, ex-partners, and siblings, at eighteen mentions. Breaking down the data by generation highlights the breadth of impact across generations. While parents may be the largest category, the survey demonstrates that a broader range of constellation of family members are involved in the dissemination of book culture, echoing the findings from family literacy research.

The range of generations speaks to the longevity of familial influence and challenges short-term or nuclear models of family, revealing a multi-directional and extended familial impact on reading culture. The presence of such a wide generational span suggests that the shaping of bookish identity is not confined to immediate family or childhood alone, but emerges through long-standing, relational networks of memory, inheritance, and everyday practice.

Material traces of family reading practices

Familial narratives reveal an intergenerational love for reading that transcends nuclear family structures and gender norms. Participants describe how various family members – from parents and grandparents to aunts, uncles, and even great-grandparents – have shaped their book culture. Participant 17, for example, owns eleven bookshelves, six of which house her personal collection. Despite her extensive library, she chooses to discuss books that link to her family's influence on her reading values:

I have [a]n old hardcover copy of Blinky Bill with the pages discoloured and falling out. It is inscribed to my father, uncle, and aunt for Christmas 1961 from my great-aunt. It's on a shelf with a few other books that I have because my father liked them. I picked this book because although I always think of my mother as having been my reading role model, actually my father had an equally big impact just in another way.

Parents are often looked to as reading role models and Participant 17's response is no exception. Indeed, Participant 17's response reflects a broader trend in the survey data. The most frequently mentioned specific familial category was mothers at nineteen mentions, followed by fathers at fifteen mentions. This pattern mirrors historical trends in family literacy, where mothers were often the primary focus of programs and interventions, reflecting their traditional role as primary caregivers within the household (Gadsden, 2004, 2012, 411). While fathers also play an important role in supporting children's reading, maternal involvement has frequently been emphasised in both research and practice, a focus that continues to evolve in contemporary literacy initiatives. Participant 157 shares a story about her father's worn copy of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, which he read to her as a teenager before passing it down to her. Despite being battered and missing chunks, or rather, because of it, the book remains a treasured object and a conduit for familial continuity as she plans to pass it on to her own teenager. Studies have found that parental involvement in their child's literacy is more powerful than class, family size or parental education (Flouri and Buchanan, 2010).

Participant 17's challenges the emphasis on maternal intervention in children's reading by recognising her father's impact. Although she does not elaborate on how their influences differ, she honours her father's role by dedicating part of a bookshelf to the books he enjoyed. Her father is the inspiration for selecting the book to discuss and a central organising figure on her home bookshelf, with the participant dedicating a shelf to the books her father liked. The participant does not say these were even her father's favourite books, but only suggests they were ones he was fond of. Blinky Bill is important to her because of her father. This highlights how lingering traces of people can elevate objects’ significance beyond a text into an object that symbolises a relationship. The Blinky Bill copy carries significance not only due to its text but also because of its familial history – it was gifted by her great-aunt and remains a symbol of intergenerational literary connection. Responses such as Participant 17's both reinforce and complicate existing family literacy research by highlighting mothers’ central role while also acknowledging significant paternal influence, suggesting a need to move beyond traditional, gendered assumptions about parental roles in children's reading development.

While many participants focused on books inherited from or associated with parents, a number of case studies reveal literary connections that extend beyond the immediate family. Participant 34 recalls a childhood book, Mates of the Kurlalong by Leslie Rees, which connects him to his grandmother, grandfather, sister, and father. His personal inscription of both his and his father's names in the book reinforces the material link between generations. In Participant 34 and Participant's 17's accounts, fathers emerge as active users of books in the history of family book culture, their presence encoded both in the objects themselves and in the practices of care, attention, and transmission that books facilitate. Their accounts also demonstrate that books can circulate across wider kinship networks, carrying memory, identity, and shared reading practices across generations. These examples highlight that familial engagement with books is not confined to mothers or fathers alone, and that literary inheritance often involves multiple relatives in diverse configurations, underscoring the complexity and reach of intergenerational book culture.

In these accounts, these books are valued not for their pristine condition but for their history and emotional resonance. Their very falling apart – the discoloured pages, broken spines, missing chunks – marks them as mundane, even disposable by commercial standards. Yet this deterioration is precisely what enhances their meaning: their physical damage symbolises their family history and significance through repeated use. While the textual product of a book is replaceable, particular copies are often irreplaceable to participants. In this way, familial connections displace the centrality of the text, making the book-as-object just as – if not more – important than the content it contains. Rather than being important for their textual content, these books are important for who the book as an object evokes.

The impact of family: Myth, memory, and identity

While familial influence manifests materially, its impact is most deeply felt through memory, identity, and emotional attachment. Many participants described moments of shared reading in childhood or adolescence as foundational to their lifelong engagement with books. In these cases, books become more than texts – they are affective artefacts, storing connection, identity, and continuity. Materiality is not just a background to memory, but the means by which memory and identity take root.

Participant 157's battered copy of Dragonriders of Pern exemplifies this. The book acted as a conduit for Participant 157 to develop a further interest in sci-fi, demonstrating how familial involvement in reading can snowball, creating larger impacts in an individual's reading culture. She now plans to pass it on to her own child, continuing the familial thread. This snowballing effect of early reading encounters – what we might call inherited enthusiasm – demonstrates how family shapes not only what we read but who we become as readers.

Participant 118 similarly connects with her family history through a set of Dickens novels once owned by her great-great-grandmother and passed down via her great-aunt. She writes:

I have a set of Dickens’ novels which belonged to my Great-great[-]grandmother, and [they were] gifted to me as a teenager by my great-aunt … I chose it because it is one of the things I treasure, and [it] is a link with earlier generations of my family who also loved Dickens.

Although the books did not come directly from her great-great-grandmother, their passage through the family symbolically links five generations. The participant's story reveals how a literary affinity, particularly for Dickens, is perceived to be passed down through five generations, with the participant suggesting a familial passion for literature that persists across time. By linking two generations and forging a common connection, the great-aunt has drawn similarities between the great-great-grandmother and participant as though they are genetically inherited traits or part of a common familial culture. Here, familial book culture takes on a mythic dimension – reading is not just an activity but a legacy.

This idea of reading as familial inheritance also emerges in Participant 66's story of receiving her great-grandfather's horsehead-shaped bookends, writing that:

[She] found it while tidying our family home and passed it to me, knowing that out of our immediate family members, I’m the one who reads books the most and would appreciate it the most, just like my great-grandfather.

The horsehead-shaped bookends do more than hold books upright: they frame, protect, and draw attention to the collection, shaping how the participant interacts with her books and the domestic space. As such, they exemplify as bookish objects: items that, while not books themselves, participate in the practices, meanings, and emotional lives surrounding reading (Baulch, 2022; Pressman, 2020; Pyne, 2016). By passing on the bookends, the family member not only conveys intergenerational literary interest but also hands over a tool for engaging with book culture: an object that make the bookshelf a curated, tactile, and meaningful space.

Participant 66's distinction between ‘reads’ and ‘appreciates’ signals that literary engagement involves both practical participation and emotional or reflective valuation, highlighting how recognition within the family depends not only on reading habits but also on sensitivity to the significance of books and objects. The phrase ‘just like my great-grandfather’ positions the participant within a lineage of literary engagement, creating a bond that is both affective and symbolic, and situates her identity in relation to family history. At the same time, this bond has a slightly mythic quality, as it relies on narrative construction as much as on shared experience. The quote also suggests that reading and bookish objects serve as a medium for intergenerational cultural transmission, shaping family practices and providing a tangible connection to past generations. Within families, reading can become a shared language that distinguishes members with a particular literary affinity.

Inheritance is not the sole means by which books become familial touchstones; memory also plays a vital role. Participant 6 provides a unique perspective, selecting a cookbook she and her sister compiled and published to honour their late mother:

The book I’ve chosen is a cookbook that my sister and I compiled, edited, and published. It is full of recipes from people whose lives have been touched by lung cancer. My mother died of lung cancer in 2015, and my sister and I created this book to raise money and awareness for the lung cancer association. All proceeds went to them. I keep it on my cooking shelf and use it when I need inspiration to cook something different.

These responses illustrate that bookshelves are more than repositories for reading material – they are sites of love, connection, and loss, keeping familial stories alive through objects and memory. Time and space are condensed on the bookshelf, as absent family members remain materially anchored in the present.

To quote Participant 69, whose great-grandmother's book holds deep sentimental value, family bestows books with ‘the best story, a connection through time.’ This study of familial book culture highlights the intricate web of relationships that imbue books with meaning. These values encompass sentimental attachment, memorialisation, and a sense of belonging. Books serve as material markers of family history, reinforcing reading identities and shaping cultural legacies that persist across generations. Books circulate as both objects and stories – their meaning shaped less by what they contain than by how they move through lives, homes, and hands.

Together, these stories show how familial book culture is built not just through acts of reading, but through the materiality of books, the memory of those who loved them, and the mythic meanings people assign across generations. Family-based reading emerges as an affective practice, performed through objects, spaces, and shared stories. Books become emblems of care, grief, identity, and connection – ordinary objects made extraordinary when entwined with personal and familial meaning. In this way, reading is less about fluency or education and more about belonging.

In other words, the social life of books is enacted and sustained through ordinary practices, material objects, and the affective networks of family. Through inheritance, gifting, and shared engagement, books become conduits for intergenerational dialogue, carrying stories, histories, and cultural predispositions that endure beyond immediate reading experiences. These intimate practices demonstrate that the significance of reading extends far beyond literacy acquisition: books act as relational and cultural anchors, cultivating enduring literary engagement and embedding reading within the social and emotional fabric of everyday life.

Discussion: What does this mean for reading?

Participants emphasised the specific physical copies of books they inherited, gifted, or displayed. These books – often worn, inscribed, or passed down informally – held deep emotional weight. They were valued not for pristine condition or literary merit, but for their connection to loved ones. A dusty shelf, a battered spine, or a handwritten note from a parent turns a book into an emotional artefact. Participants described them as reminders of those they had lost, or as vessels of childhood memories. Books became tangible sites of grief, joy, continuity, and care. This view disrupts the utilitarian framing of books as neutral carriers of information. It positions them instead within a material culture of memory, where the object itself – not just its content – shapes identity and reading habits over time.

In the survey, familial reading is primarily a relational and emotional practice. Reading was rarely described as a solitary, goal-oriented activity. Instead, it was social and cumulative: books were read aloud, gifted, shared, remembered, and returned to across generations. Many participants described books not in terms of plot or genre, but more in terms of who gave it to them and when. This extends the notion of book culture as a social process far beyond the act of co-reading or bonding over a shared public experience based around the text or author. Curating a bookshelf, preserving a worn volume, or passing on a book to a child are all social acts. These practices reflect the connection between affect and literacy, demonstrating ways of using books to rehearse love, perform identity, and signal care.

Books passed down across generations often function as more than reading material: they introduce recipients to family reading practices and foster a sense of literary belonging across families. These texts, and sometimes objects, carry the enthusiasm and passions of previous generations, connecting readers to their family's literary history. Participants described books received from parents, grandparents, or extended family members as significant not only for their content but also for their emotional and relational value, showing how literary objects help define family identity. In this way, bookshelves act as displays of kinship and shared history, making the connections between family, reading, and memory visible. This view highlights that family literacy is a long-term practice of belonging, embedded in both material culture and social networks.

Despite their power, these affective and social practices are increasingly at odds with broader cultural shifts. Recent research by the publishing company HarperCollins suggests that Generation X and younger parents are reading less frequently to their children (2024). This decline likely reflects not indifference but exhaustion, time scarcity, and the repositioning of reading as a school-based task rather than a family-based practice. Family literacy research positions families as essential invisible disseminations of reading skill and culture. If the processes of familial reading culture diminish, so too does the scaffolding that helps children imagine themselves as readers. What is lost is not just comprehension but the identify formation of young readers and development of their sense of belonging. Books may still be read for comprehension and skill, but the emotional and cultural infrastructure that supports recreational reading practices risks collapse. The intergenerational handover that sustained participants’ love of reading – the gifting, remembering, sharing – may not be repeated.

At the same time, this article demonstrates that a wider constellation of family members can be mobilised to foster and sustain children's reading culture. Beyond the traditional focus on parents or primary caregivers, grandparents, siblings, and extended kin can all play meaningful roles in shaping how reading is valued and practised within the home. This broader view acknowledges that literacy is not only a skill developed through direct instruction, but also a social and cultural activity that takes shape through everyday interactions and shared experiences. This research also suggests that fostering connection and a sense of belonging within the family's reading culture may be as valuable as time spent reading individually with children. In recognising this, the fields of family literacy and book culture research converge to show that reading development is as much about relationships and identity as it is about literacy, texts and techniques, offering new frameworks for understanding how children become readers, what motivates their engagement, and what sustains their interest.

This study suggests that the material book is not merely a delivery mechanism for text. You cannot simply hand a child any book, without context or connection, and expect it to anchor a lifelong reading identity. The books that mattered most to participants were those that came with someone – a parent's voice, a grandparent's signature, a sibling's shared joke. The meaningfulness of reading was entangled in the book's physicality: the feel of the object, the memory of who gave it, the smell of an old page. This has significant implications for literacy promotion. The findings suggest that the most powerful reading experiences were not about decoding, but about connection. Books were remembered not as tools, but as gestures of care – gifts, legacies, memory capsules. Interventions focused solely on reading levels or access to books will miss the deeper work that families do to make readers. Reading is not merely an individual act of comprehension but a form of cultural inheritance – fragile, uneven, and sustained through everyday familial practice.

Conclusion

Family plays a central and complex role in shaping book journeys. Family members engage deeply in selecting, cherishing, creating, and passing on books, imbuing them with value and longevity. Beyond the nuclear family, survey data shows that extended families – including various genders, relationships, and generations – also play a crucial role in shaping book culture and giving individual books significance. This expanded network identified in this article can be leveraged to address the broader familial interventions in children's literacy and reading for leisure.

Familial book culture reveals that reading habits are not just personal practices, but intergenerational practices, rich with emotional, cultural, and historical meaning. Books become memory objects, identity markers, and connectors within families, fostering pathways into reading and sustaining long-term engagement, and enabling a sense of continuity and belonging. They do not simply transmit information or skills; they circulate meaning, values, and literary passions, shaping how individuals understand themselves as readers and how they relate to others.

In this context, books are valued not just for their content, but for their material and emotional significance – elements that are often prioritised over the text itself. This perspective shifts how we value books, especially when presenting them to young and emerging readers, as demonstrated in the case studies throughout this article. Recognising literacy as an affective and relational practice, rather than a mere technical skill, has profound implications for literacy education.

This article has shown that families do the quiet but vital work of making readers – through love, grief, gifting, memory, and attention. The participants’ stories reveal this work in the form of worn copies, dedicated shelves, and inherited traditions. The point is not just that family matters, but that it matters in concrete, affective, and cultural ways – ways that are too often overlooked in policy and research. If we want to understand what sustains reading across a lifetime, we need to start with the people who put books in hands, stories in homes, and meaning into the margins.