For beautiful fairy tales: book card for children will be tested in 2027

The pilot of the Golden Key children's book card is planned to be launched next year, Izvestia found out. In several regions of the Russian Federation, families in need with children aged three to six will receive 3,000 rubles each to purchase literature from a special list. In 2030, the project will start across the country, and access can be extended to all families with preschoolers. Experts rate the idea positively, but a card with such a symbolic amount is unlikely to instill in a child a love of reading without much effort from parents. What will be allowed to buy with a card and whether there will be a key to defeating the dominance of smartphones — in the Izvestia article.

How will the book map pilot project work?

A children's book card may appear in Russia as early as next year. The main objective of the project is to help families with young children buy high—quality literature and foster their love of reading from an early age. 3 thousand rubles will be credited to the card once.

— As far as I know, the working option at the moment is to implement the Children's Book Map project in stages. In 2027-2029, we will start with testing, with a pilot regime in a number of subjects of the Russian Federation, defining two criteria: the age of children from three to six years old and targeting, that is, the neediness of the family. And starting in 2030, the project, we hope, will be launched in all regions of the Russian Federation," Elena Yampolskaya, adviser to the President of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia.

The criterion for issuing the card is whether the family receives a monthly allowance in connection with the birth and upbringing of the child. As you know, it is assigned in a targeted manner, that is, if the average income per family member per month is not more than the subsistence minimum in the relevant region, Yampolskaya said.

After the pilot, the authorities will decide whether to keep these conditions or make changes. That's why testing is necessary.

For the first time, the idea of creating a children's book card was put forward by Vladimir Putin on June 5, 2025, at a meeting of the Council for the Implementation of state Policy to support the Russian language and the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation. The Ministry of Education has been assigned responsibility for the program, which, together with the aforementioned council and other authorities, is currently preparing its proposals. The government must approve the financing by September 15. Earlier, the media reported that, at the request of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance, they want to deal with the map only after 2030, so as not to burden the budget. But in a conversation with Izvestia, Yampolskaya emphasized that the map would begin to be implemented next year.

After the report of the Cabinet of Ministers, the Ministry of Education will promptly convene another expert council of teachers, psychologists, delegates from the parent community and relevant public figures. It is up to this commission to decide which books the zoomers will be allowed to purchase on the card for their children of the alpha and beta generations. In order to completely eliminate any risks, additional expertise will be assigned to the Russian Book Union.

According to Elena Yampolskaya, the basis will be Russian children's literature. But there may also be time-tested works by foreign authors. The main requirement is that books must have high artistic and educational value.

The name of the card will appear later, however, as Yampolskaya said, the Golden Key remains the priority option. Most likely, the card will be available in the format of an electronic certificate for Public Services, similar to the Pushkin Card, says Elena Yampolskaya. Parents will receive a notification about the card issue in the MAX messenger and in their personal account on the Gosuslugi portal. However, the final mechanism will be determined by the Government.

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Will the book card bring back children's love of literature

Opinion polls stubbornly prove that over the past 15 years, children's interest in letters on paper has been experiencing a protracted peak. Back in the pre-modern era, when sitting in four walls was not a forced trend, VTsIOM shared "invigorating" statistics: during the summer holidays, students aged seven to ten mastered as many as three or four books, teenagers heroically reached one or two, and one in five children honestly admitted that they considered reading a dull activity. Analysts just shrug their shoulders: home libraries are rapidly emptying, while the younger generation is successfully investing all their free hours in the World Wide Web.

MTS analysts recently estimated that almost 40% of teenagers aged 11-14 hang out on their phones for six to eight hours a day. Their younger colleagues of seven to ten years are not far behind, spending three to five hours online. Even children aged four or six, 43% are online for up to two hours a day, with the official "norm" from the Ministry of Education of 20 minutes.

It is obvious that the book card alone will not solve the problem of decreasing interest in reading among children, Maxim Krongauz, Doctor of Philology, linguist, professor at the Higher School of Economics and the Russian State University of Economics, explained to Izvestia. The main role here is played by the family: if the parents read with the child, he is still more likely to love books. The map can be just one of the tools that will help to return the book to an important place in a child's life. In the meantime, literature is becoming more expensive, the Golden Key will be a pleasant bonus for families with preschoolers.

Speaking of money. The same "Golden Key" by Alexei Tolstoy costs from 200 to 3 thousand rubles, depending on the edition. It turns out that the state's card will be able to purchase from one to 15 books for a child.

In a head-on collision with smartphones, the book map is, of course, doomed to defeat, states Krongauz. To make the younger generation fall in love with the classics, we will have to look for many more solutions — for example, packaging reading into engaging mobile applications. At the same time, of course, no one was going to write off living books to the archive and dispose of libraries.

Thus, government subsidies can make the purchase of books a little less painful for the budget, but it will not be possible to forcibly instill in a child a love of beauty without the participation of his parents. Traditional family readings still have a slim chance of shouting over the endless "digital noise" and snatching children out of the clutches of smartphones. And at the same time strengthen family values.