The book and public policies

past and present

Abstract

This article seeks to understand how the implementation of public policies in Brazil can influence the reading habit. Our objective is to observe the history of public policies involving the book in order to understand the current reading rates in the country, published in the research “Portrayal of Reading in Brazil”. This is an exploratory, bibliographical and documentary research with an inductive method. We observed that, from the time of Colonial Brazil, there was a delay before the State began to apply effective public policies to encourage the reading of books. Through this article, we were able to visualize the importance and the need to maintain effective public policies around books and reading. For more access to books and reading in the country, it is necessary to invest in the State.