The effectiveness of creative bibliotherapy for internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behaviors in children: A systematic review

Fiction-reading for good or ill: eating disorders, interpretation and the case for creative bibliotherapy research

“…The evaluative and research elements of the policy and clinical interventions for other genres summarised in the previous section are solely observational, with benefits claimed on the basis of participants’ self-report and researcher/facilitator observation, and no control conditions or randomisation. A systematic review of evidence for the efficacy of creative bibliotherapy was published by Paul Montgomery and Kathryn Maunders in 2015,52 focusing on the strengthening of prosocial behaviours in children and finding a small to moderate positive effect. However, a more recent review for post-traumatic stress disorder,53 although it found promising trends in a number of qualitative or low-quality quantitative studies, failed to locate any high-quality controlled trials at all.…”

Bringing Bibliotherapy for Children to Clinical Practice

“…2 A systematic review by Montgomery and Maunders suggested a small to moderate effect of bibliotherapy on internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behaviors. 5 Three stages have been described in the successful use of bibliotherapy in the clinician's office (Table 1). Clinical indications include times when the child believes no one else is experiencing what he or she is, has trouble acknowledging repressed feelings, or is having trouble seeing possible solutions to his or her problems.…”

The resilience-enabling value of African folktales: The read-me-to-resilience intervention

“…As reported in this Rm2R study, using bibliotherapy in traditionally clinical ways (i.e., aligned with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy rationales, aimed at a child/children and facilitated by an adult-see Montgomery & Maunders, 2015) may have limited value for nurturing resilience because it appears not to leverage social ecological responsiveness. Ultimately, for children to develop optimally, adults in any given social ecology need to make relevant caregiving and contextual resources available to children.…”

“…In most instances, they read to children immediately after school in classrooms or other available public spaces. Unlike in other more creative iterations of bibliotherapy (e.g., Mayaba & Wood, 2015;Montgomery & Maunders, 2015), in this quasi₢ experimental study, the fieldworkers did not engage children in any form of follow-up activity that would potentially prompt reflection on or internalization of resilience-enabling story content.…”