Fantasy Rugby Reading

This is a simple way of encouraging rugby-loving children to read more this week. And to read with their families or friends.

The RBS Six Nations tournament begins on Saturday. The Daily Telegraph are running a fantasy rugby league, where people can choose 15 players for their team, from across all six teams. Players are given points for what they achieve in their games.

Whoever chooses the best 15 players in this year's tournament can win £10,000. You can set up a league for you and your friends, school mates or team mates,

Encourage children to take part, pitching them against their friends. This is where the reading comes in.

There are loads of guides to the Six Nations on line and in newspapers at the moment. Rugby World. The Rugby Paper. The Telegraph. The Times. Each country has their own website too.

The children may want to have a look at these - and have a good read - to make sure they choose the most effective team.

Teachers could even challenge class against class in school to see which class knows the most about rugby union. If you put them in the direction of some rugby reading a fantasy team or league could work for them.

You can take part here. It's free.

Good luck.

What is the Rugby Reading Game?

This February and March I am going to be working in schools across England, Wales and Scotland playing my Rugby Reading Game.

And in April I'll be doing the same in New Zealand, when I am out there touring rugby-loving schools.

The plan for this spring is to tie in with the RBS Six Nations tournament, which begins on 1st February and goes on into March. If children are into rugby union, this is a great time to use that sport passion to encourage them to read for pleasure. Because of the hype around the tournament and because there will be lots about to read about the game.

The nuts and bolts of the Rugby Reading Game are explained here on my website. In brief, it is a quiz. About things you can read on rugby. Children who get questions right take a penalty at my eight-foot indoor rugby posts. The winner gets a trophy.

The idea is to showcase all the newspaper, magazine, website and book coverage of the tournament using a quiz format. And using competitive spirit. It is up-to-date and includes lots of questions non rugby fans can have a go at.

But there is more to the Rugby Reading Game than that. What happens is children - often children who do not enthuse about reading - tell me and their peers what they like reading. Rugby and non-rugby material. Somehow the game opens more people up to say 'I am a reader.'

I love to see children defining themselves as readers. Accepting that they might not read classic books, but that reading Jonny Wilkinson's rugby coaching book or Rugby World magazine count.

The librarian at Llandovery College said: 'Our pupils loved meeting Tom. His enthusiasm for reading (and sport) was really infectious and drew them in from the moment he arrived. The Rugby Reading Game was a great hit with both boys and girls and the chance of taking a drop kick was fiercely competed.’

If you'd like me to come to your school or library and run some Rugby Reading Games, please let me know. I have dates available to tie in with this autumn's QBE internationals and the 2015 Six Nations and World Cup. You can email me at info@tompalmer.co.uk for more information.

Six Nations Previews

This last weekend saw several previews for the RBS Six Nations published on the news stands.

Some of these guides can be a really useful way of getting children reading for pleasure.

These are the kinds of things I would have looked at - and even read - when I was under 15. I was not a big reader, but they would have got me reading. They are immediate. They are relevant. And, they are about what I am interested in. Here and now.

Now a little older than 15, I had the whole of Sunday afternoon to enjoy some of them, sitting in a café in Leeds as my wife and daughter watched Strictly Live. (By the way, I quite enjoy aspects of Strictly, but two tickets are cheaper than three.)



I chose three previews to review. The Rugby Paper. The Sunday Telegraph. And the official tournament guide.


The Rugby Paper

I love the Rugby Paper. It is weekly, very up to date and only £1.50. In effect its last four or five issues have been previews for the Six Nations, with coverage of preparations, interviews with key players and news of injuries and form.

The twelve-page special pull-out in the 26th January paper has more previews, interviews and fact files. The strength is that it is up-to-date. Very up-to-date. Read with the Rugby Paper itself, it gave me a good idea of what teams might be planning, fearing, hoping for.

There is also an excellent three-page chat between their key reporters, asking who is going to win the Six Nations and why.


The Sunday Telegraph

The Sunday Telegraph is my favourite newspaper for sport. And when it comes to rugby it can hardly contain itself. Rugby union, that is. It was a bit more reserved during the Rugby League World Cup.

The centre piece of the Sunday Telegraph's Six Nations coverage was six interviews with well-known rugby people. JPR Williams on Wales, for example. Each was asked a series of questions about their team's tournament. Key match. Key player. Prediction. And pressure point. Along with that, there are features on Hartley, Warburton and Twelvetrees.

All week the Daily Telegraph will be in overdrive about the Six Nations. Worth keeping up with here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion.


RBS 6 NATIONS 2014: Official Championship Guide

I love official guides to tournaments. They have features on each team, a score chart, great photos, interviews with interesting or emerging players, the thoughts of the game's former heroes. Lots of stuff like that. Something to put on the arm of your sofa for next few weekends. Something to make you feel you are part of what is going on.

This guide has all that, except a score chart. I suppose things like score charts are being replaced by Apps. But it's sad, all the same.

For me the most exciting pages in the official guide are the how-to-get-to-the-stadium pages. I don't normally look at these. I've had no need. I've never seen England play rugby union. Until now! Because today I got confirmation. I am off to the England-Ireland match.

Later in the week the Rugby World magazine Six Nations special will be published. That will be worth a look too. I'll blog about it in a few days.

Six Nations Reading

This week will see a lot of media coverage for rugby union. The RBS Six Nations kick off on Saturday with Wales v Italy and France v England. Then Ireland v Scotland on Sunday. All the games are live on BBC TV.

This means it is a good time to promote reading for pleasure through one of the UK's favourite sports.

This week I will be writing a blog each day (in theory) to spread a few ideas I've used and observed around using rugby to promote literacy.

Monday: a review of newspaper and magazine previews

Tuesday: the rugby reading game

Wednesday: how running a fantasy rugby league can encourage reading

Thursday: rugby books for kids

Friday: not sure yet, but something will come up

There is one resource I can direct you to now. I worked with the National Literacy Trust in 2011 to create Love Rugby Love Reading, a toolkit full of ideas for libraries and classrooms to promote reading for pleasure through the game. It's free. It's here.

Tom Palmer is a children's author. Many of his books are about sport, including Scrum, published by Barrington Stoke. www.tompalmer.co.uk

'I wish there had been a book like Tom Palmer’s Scrum! when I was growing up.  Any book that encourages kids to read, and play grass roots rugby is great by me!'
George North, Wales

Boys and Literacy

I'm going to a National Literacy Trust conference on February 12th. It's called How to Close the Literacy Gap for Boys. In Manchester.

I'm going because I want to learn more about engaging boys with reading for pleasure. It's something I try to do every day through the books I write and the school visits I do. But looking at the line up for this conference, I know there's a lot more I can learn. That is why I am going.

I want to listen to Gary Wilson again. I last heard him about five years ago. His ideas, attitude and energy for getting boys into reading had a profound effect on my work.

I also want to see the keynote speaker, David Almond. I have never seen him speak, but my wife goes on about what an amazing speaker he is and there is a lot I could learn from him. Also his books are fab.

It will be good to listen to Di Pumphrey from West Thornton School in London. I visited her school in 2012 and was amazed by all the create ideas they have for engaging children with reading. One of the best schools I've ever seen in that respect. She'll be well worth listening to.

The last speaker I'd like to see is Jim Sells. Jim works for the National Literacy Trust. He runs Premier League Reading Stars. Jim is also my friend. But my huge respect for the work he does in engaging boys with reading is not inspired by our friendship. It is inspired by the passion I see him putting into the work he does. By his ideas. By the way he genuinely cares about each boy that takes part in his literacy projects.

This conference will be really good, I am sure. Look at the line up. There are still some places left. There are places left at the London conference on 13th February too.

See you there?

Your football and literacy ideas please...

The National Literacy Trust  have asked me to update the reading motivation toolkit that I wrote for the 2010 World Cup.

Love Football Love Reading is a twenty-five page document with ideas about using the World Cup to encourage reading for pleasure in schools and libraries. It includes ideas for displays, events, activities and book groups.

This is the original.

For 2014 I want to do more than just refresh the toolkit. I want to create a whole new body of ideas.

Have you thought up or invented any sports literacy projects that we can include? Have you heard of other ideas? Do you have new ideas yourself?

The more input we get from other people the better this resource will be. Please help and please ask your networks.

The toolkit will be available for free at www.literacytrust.org.uk from May 2014. It will be designed and illustrated with England football images by the FA.

You can email me at info@tompalmer.co.uk with your ideas. Ideally before the end of February, as my deadline is mid-March.

Thank you.

Reading Force

I worked with Reading Force for the first time today.

I'll let you visit their website to find the full detail of what they do, but this is what their founder, Alison Baverstock says on that website. It's what made me very keen to work with them.

'Over the years, when my husband was away [in the Army], we would communicate through books. I would send him things I had read, he’d read them, and then we would talk on the phone about our reactions. And as the children got older we involved them too. Some good conversations resulted. Reading together created common ground and the opportunity to connect, and provided a welcome distraction from the stresses and strains of so many long separations.

'In 2010 I had the idea of encouraging other Service families to share books and talk about them, and to offer them special scrapbooks to fill up. This became Reading Force. Started in Aldershot in 2011, the scheme has grown in popularity ever since.'

I have been working in reader development for twenty years. I've done it in libraries, prisons, pubs, football stadiums, on trains in the UK and in Malaysia, Korea and Russia. But Reading Force strikes me as one of the very best examples of what reader development can achieve.

Reader development is about bringing people together to talk about reading, to share reactions to books. What better project can you invent for reader development than Reading Force?

*******

Today I visited Le Cateau Primary School at Catterick Garrison. They are a school that uses the Reading Force scheme with forces families. I was there for two reasons.

One was to play my Football Reading Game with the kids. It's about getting children talking about books together, essentially.

The other reason I was there was to ask the children what they thought of the book I am writing for Barrington Stoke.

I was offered a group of ten year fives by Le Cateau. They were given a manuscript copy of the book I am working on, In Harms Way. It is the story of a fourteen year old boy moving to a new school - and having to play rugby, against his wishes - while his dad is taking part in a conflict, flying Typhoon fighter aircraft.

Eight of the ten year fives I spoke to have parents in the Forces.

You can see why it was useful to me. If I am going to write about children with parents who are involved in a conflict, I can't just make up how that feels.

Happily the children liked the book. They had some good points to make. They corrected me. And that was very welcome. It'll be a better book thanks to the conversation we had today.

It was a great day for me. I'd like to thanks Reading Force and I hope we can do more together in the future.

Have a look at the Reading Force website and see what you think.

Thanks for reading.

Is reading about football proper reading?

In the UK writing about football is looked down on by lots of people. Not everybody, but lots of people, all the same.

I have seen it.

I think this looking down attitude to football reading is bad for children.

I was doing a school event once. I had been talking to 80 boys about how I read about football in newspapers, magazines and books and that it helped make me into a football fiction author. During questions at the end, the teacher put her hand up.

'But are you going to write proper books?' she asked.

I'll never forget that. I had been working for an hour to convince these boys that you can read about anything you like, so long as you are reading. That if you read match reports about football in newspapers and magazine interviews with players, then you can call yourself a reader.

The teacher undermined the whole session, reinforcing the other view, that football writing isn't proper. And that you are only a proper reader if you reader proper books.

(By the way, most teachers are great and embrace and promote a great attitude to all reading all year round.)

I read on the BBC website this morning that Roy Keane (firecracker football figure) is having his autobiography written by Roddy Doyle (one of the most respected literary authors of the last quarter-century). Read more here.

That makes me happy. I'm no fan of Roy Keane, but a collaboration of football and writing like that will only help me to persuade teachers and children that you can read about football and for it to be proper.

It will join books like Fever Pitch and The Damned United - and hundreds more - that are superbly written books about something that matters a lot to millions of people. A game that captures and is a conduit for an array of human emotions.

And it is not just the case with adult books.

My Foul Play books are about a boy who takes on the corrupt chairmen, owners and players of football to make the game less cynical and more rooted in its fans.

Dan Freedman's Jamie Johnson books are about a boy working his way through the football system to become one of the world's greatest players. This is no glib series mimicking the FIFA video game. It is well thought out and written by a man who has worked for the FA and other media organisations at the heart of the game. And someone who cares about children's welfare within that machine.

Helena Pielichaty writes a series of books called Girls FC. A twelve book series about a girls' football team that girls I meet love because, amongst other things, it is the longest kids' football series in the UK - and it is about girls.

Mal Peet writes books set in South America. About football. His novel, Keeper, mixes magic realism with the World Cup to create one of the finest children's novels I have a ever read. And it is about football. I use it to encourage children - who like football but who say they don't like reading - to change and say...

... I am a reader.

Over the Line

In March I have new book out. It's called Over the Line and is about the WWI soldier who came out of the trenches to score England's first post-war international goal.

Jack Cock was in his teens when the war began. He volunteered to join the Footballer's Battalion in 1915, having just broken into the Huddersfield Town first team. He fought at the Somme, saw many of his fellow footballers killed in action, but survived himself, winning medals for bravery.

In 1919 England played Ireland in Belfast. Jack Cock scored after just 30 seconds on his debut.

Although Over the Line is fiction all the characters, football matches and battles are real. That is why it felt such a special book to write. It was standing at the grave of the Grimsby player, Sid Wheelhouse, that made me understand that writing about real people is very different to inventing spies, detectives and young sports stars.

I am going back to the Somme area of France in February to make some films for the website - www.firstworldwarfictionforkids.co.uk. The idea is to talk about and read from key scenes in the books where the action actually took place. Delville Wood. Bethune. Boulogne docks. The website will be live later in the spring.
 
The first review of Over the Line was written by children's author and football fan, Helena Pielichaty. Here it is.

On My Bike

I've just come from an exciting meeting to do with the Tour de France.

The Tour starts in Leeds this year, creating a great opportunity to engage children with libraries and reading through sport. I met with Leeds Libraries, Leeds Schools Library Service and Leeds Inspired, a charity that supports Leeds-based artistic and educational activity.

This is what we are going to do.

In the last week of June and the first week of July 2014 (running up to the Grand Depart, as we call it) I will visit all 40 of Leeds' public Libraries. Four a day. At each library I will speak to a school class of year three and year four children for half an hour. I will:

1. Read them a specially commissioned story about a girl who goes to her library on her bike, borrows a book and has an adventure inspired by the book she chose on the way home. Sort of Mr Ben for today's kids - and on two wheels.

2. Tell the children how Leeds Libraries took me on an adventure and made me a reader, a writer and a happy person. All very true.

3. Invite the children to enter a writing competition to choose a library book and write the adventure it would inspire for them. Guess what the prize for the winner is?

A bike.

I will travel between all the libraries by bike too. Ten days. Ten to forty miles a day. About 400 miles in all, roughly, if you include getting to Leeds station and back every day.

Leeds will be buzzing with the Tour de France in June and July. I hope this tour will help get children to the library and reading for pleasure. That's the plan.

I also think that meeting an author from Leeds and seeing that using my local libraries had such an impact on me will work too. I hope so.

Rugby literacy resources

With the England RBS Six Nations squad just announced and the tournament beginning three weeks today, here is a reminder of all the rugby literacy resources available on the National Literacy Trust and my websites.

If you have a school or library full of rugby fans, these could be useful:

Love Rugby: Love Reading: toolkit of ideas for rugby related reading activities, events and displays that you can use in classrooms and libraries.

Rugby literacy pack. Exercises, word searches and writing challenges for rugby fans.

Reviews of rugby books, magazines and websites suitable for children, drawn from my blog. (At the foot of the page.)

List of rugby fiction for children.

If I can do anything to enhance displays you're doing based on these resources, please let me know. I could add a personal message or offer a signed copy of my book Scrum! if you are having a competition...

... in fact, I'll offer six signed copies for schools or libraries that get in touch, if you can use it in conjunction with the above. I'll stop after six, so it'll be first come first served.

By the way, I am writing a rugby union trilogy for children at the moment. It will be published by Barrington Stoke in September 2014, February 2015 and September 2015. In time for the Rugby World Cup, taking place in England, autumn 2015.

Happy rugbying!

Introducing the Guernsey Sports Reading Acacemy

I am in the Channel Islands this week, working on a project called the Guernsey Sports Reading Academy.

Research is a very important part of what I am doing, so today I am travelling round the island looking for settings. Harbours. Running tracks. Outdoor swimming pools.

But far more important than the research is my co-authors. Fifty year sevens here in Guernsey.

The idea of the Guernsey Sports Reading Academy is that - in 2014 - I will work with year seven children in three high schools in Guernsey to create twelve stories based on their favourite sports. Sports they take part in, rather than just watch on TV.

Guernsey is a very sporty place. Most of the kids do some sort of sport regularly. A drive round the island shows you why so many great sportspeople come from Guernsey: the facilities are superb for such a small population.

The children are helping me with the stories at every stage of writing:

First, I met them and asked them about the favourite sports. We thought about a few ideas for stories that could be written based on their experience and imaginations.

Second, I worked up nine short synopses and the children chose six stories they wanted me to write from those, to cover the first six months of 2014.

Third, I will write the first drafts and then the children will read them and comment on them, as well as helping me to add local detail and cut out anything that isn't Guernsey-like.

But there is more.

Each sport story will be written in a certain genre. As things stand there will be a sea-fishing story that includes fishing families spying on each others' best fishing ground. Another story is about coasteering - children climbing the rocks around the coast. That will include a meeting with a ghost of a German soldier from the WW2 occupation.

As the children help me with each story, the schools and libraries will feed them books from whatever genre we are working on. Hoping to make them engage with reading for pleasure.

I come back to Guernsey in May to do more research and to talk through the stories we have written. I am still trying to persuade a boy whose family do a lot of bass fishing to ask his dad to let me come with them to their secret bass fishing place, blindfolded until we get there.

I hope he lets me.

As I said, research is important.

Sports Reader Review # 1

I plan to review any sports book, magazine or website I read this year.

In brief.

The Rugby Paper

I've been trying to learn more about rugby union. The Rugby Paper has taught me more than any newspaper, other magazine or book. It offers up-to-date news on the big issues in the game, great columnists, match reports on the week's games and challenging debate.

With the RBS Six Nations four weeks away, The Rugby Paper is gearing up for all the action with news, previews and speculation. I've been reading it for a few weeks and am already hooked into anxiety about who is going to play wing for England, the turmoil in the European club tournament and the Welsh rugby's on-going problems... off the field.

I'm getting to know things and to form opinions that I could never have had otherwise. And I need that, seeing as I am writing a rugby union trilogy for kids.

That and watching the game. A lot.

I'm new to rugby union, really being more of a football and rugby league fan. But The Rugby Paper is at a good level for me. Some of its content goes over my head, but I can choose to try and understand those bits or just scan them. The newspaper format helps with that. Headlines and photographs draw your attention - or not.

That is why I think this would be a good magazine to have in a library or classroom where you have young rugby union fans. I'll be using it as part of my Rugby Reading Game in schools across the UK during the RBS Six Nations. I wonder if schools and libraries could be offered a special deal? Like First News, which finds its way to over 1,000,000 children every week.

The Rugby Paper comes out every Sunday. It costs £1.50. It is 40+ tabloid-sized pages about rugby union. You can get it in most newsagents, WHSmith, supermarkets and by subscription.

Sport and Literacy, 2014

2014 is a big year for sport, as you can see from this BBC preview to the sporting year.

But, then, every year is a sporting year. This year is really nothing that special. The key thing for me is that we can use sport to get children reading. Every year.

If you read the last three posts on this blog, you'll see what I am planning to do this year to achieve that.

To add to that, here are five highlights from my website. Free sport and literacy resources for schools, libraries and parents that could be useful.

ONE
A set of free posters for a sports reading display in your school or library.

TWO
A schools' resource pack where you can make your pupils or users the stars of a sports' reading campaign.

THREE
A free National Literacy Trust ideas pack that you can use during the forthcoming rugby union RBS Six Nations tournament in February.

FOUR
A free British Council story - audio or print - that I wrote, featuring the FA Cup, currently breaking and lifting hearts around the country.

FIVE
A free personalised card written by me to any child you think could do with a reading boost. Just email me via my website. Very happy to do this.

Look out for a lot more of this material during 2014, tying in with the BBC link above. Particularly with the football World Cup, rugby internationals and the Tour de France cycling.

Why it is easier to make up rugby characters than football characters

I'm writing a trilogy of rugby union stories for children.

There are five main characters who play in the team, giving me the usual challenge of defining a group of children as different from each other and three-dimensional.

When I wrote the Football Academy series I had to make up eleven believable characters for an under-eleven football team. It was not easy. I struggled to not make them all seem two-dimensional types. I solved that problem - after a lot of struggling - by basing all the players on people I knew. That worked.

With my rugby series I have found it easier. It's to do with the nature of the game of rugby. Each of my five players needs a position on the rugby field. And in rugby the positions players play in are much more defined than in football. (In my opinion.)

There are specific roles that certain physical attributes lend themselves to in rugby. Also, certain positions demand psychological strengths as opposed to others. So, while I was choosing what my characters would be like, I started with the position they played in.

One would be a centre. Strong. Fast. Creative. So he can get through a defence.

Another would be a scrum half. Alert. Tactically aware. Always thinking.

A third would be a fly half. Focussed. Obsessive. Good at communicating.

Once I knew their positions, I knew what they looked like. And I had some ideas about what they might be like as players. Their strengths. Their weakness. It helped a lot. It worked.

I think.

What I am writing in 2014

My 2014 writing is going to be determined almost entirely by forthcoming major sporting competitions. That suits me fine. It will also be determined by my desire to use major sporting events to promote reading for pleasure.

And it starts now.

This week I am writing a story about a girl called Lily, who cycles to her local library. She takes out a book about the Amazon rainforest. She chose the book because she had just seen something on the TV about England playing their first World Cup match in the Brazilian rainforest.

But the story is not for the World Cup. It's for the Tour de France. The Tour de France starts in Leeds, where I'll be reading this story to over 2000 children in all of Leeds' 40 libraries. The idea is to get children already excited about cycling to get excited about stories and libraries too.

I hope Lily's adventures on a bike and in the Amazon will help do that.

I am writing something specifically for the football World Cup too. The World Cup takes place in June and July. I am going to be writing a 750-word chapter every day of the tournament. It will be read in schools. Somewhere between 2,000 and 20,000 schools, working with the National Literacy Trust. The idea is to write the story every day so that it responds to the events of the tournament. It will be a crime thriller, featuring Danny and Charlotte from my Foul Play books. It will begin in the Amazon rainforest. And it will challenge my writing abilities - a lot.

You can find out more about the World Cup story here.

During the rest of the year I will be writing a rugby union trilogy for Barrington Stoke. Three books about a rugby playing school taking part in the UK, European, then World Schools rugby union championships. It means arduous research trips to the South of France and New Zealand. But I'll cope.

My characters are three boys, based loosely on the childhoods of three celebrated rugby union people. They're called Chris, Jonny and Woody.

The three rugby union books will all be out in time for next year's Rugby Union World Cup, hosted in the UK. The first is out in October, later this year.

One other writing project in 2014.

Every month I will be working with Y6 and Y7 children in Guernsey, writing a story about each of their twelve favourite sports. This will be hugely challenging, taking me away from my usual grass pitch sports of football and rugby and into the worlds of sea fishing, coasteering and marathon running.

But I like a challenge. It makes writing a bit like taking part in sport. And that suits me too.

Happy 2014.