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.