Can you ride a bike? Mindful and alert story processing as a new assessment procedure for bibliotherapists

Bibliotherapy is a unique therapeutic method which relies on different reading and writing processes. A crucial part of this therapeutic method is the focus on the process of identification-echoing-insight that occurs while reading or listening to a story; the readers identify with a character in the story, relate the events in the story to their personal lives, and finally, examine the story from a broader perspective to gain a new insight. While there are diverse and creative techniques for bibliotherapeutic work, there are no assessment procedures to examine this process, especially in younger ages. Accordingly, the current article presents a novel assessment procedure that aims to evaluate this process in young children: Mindful and Alert Story Processing (MASP). The article presents and describes MASP and explores different directions for therapeutic work with this procedure based on three case examples.