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.