FOOTBALL READING #4

This is the fourth in a set of ten tips on how to encourage children to get into reading through their love of football - to celebrate the new season.

Fantasy Football could be the way to get your children into reading more about football. It might encourage them to read more in newspapers and online in particular.

If you don't know what it is, Fantasy Football is a game you can play in newspapers and on some websites, where you pick a team using all the players in the Premier League.

Then, as the season unfolds, you gain or lose points from your players' performances: how many goals they score, or their team concedes; if they set up a goal or get sent off.

You can transfer players throughout the season.

Most people play it in leagues, pitting their football expertise against friends and workmates.

So why not do it with your kids? Or even with their friends and other parents?

It's fun and it makes Match of the Day more interesting.

The reading bit is... to make sure you know who the best players are to sign for your team or to make sure you know who is injured or on international duty, you need to read match previews and reports in the newspapers or online.

If you don't read up on it, you lose.

That's the idea.

You can set up a league on various websites. The most popular are the Daily Telegraph and the Sun, but there are several more to choose from.

To read the newspapers, if you can;t afford to buy a paper every day, try the newspapers websites, like the Mirror. Or go to the library where you can read newspapers for free.

And if you win a national competition, you can win LOTS of money. But you probably won't...

FOOTBALL READING # 3

This is the third of ten blogs about using the excitement around the forthcoming football season to encourage children to read about the game in books, newpapers, online and - today - in magazines.

One per day in the run up to the Premier League kick off.

If you're going to pay the £2.50 to £4.50 the football magazines cost, today might be the best day to do it.

As you can see, they are full of previews about the season. In fact, a lot of them have free wall charts and supplements, so you will get better value for money.

These are the main magazines available in the UK:

Match - a great mixture of pictures and short text, largely about the Premier League. Great for reluctant readers.

Match of the Day - a lot like Match, but even more popular with children. Great content for reluctant readers.

Kick - as above, but more posters than text.

FourFourTwo - glossy football magazine aimed at teenagers and adults. Great articles and fancy photography.

World Soccer - about football across the world. Not good for a struggling reader. Quite political. Brilliant for authors writing about the game.

WSC - stands for When Saturday Comes is like Private Eye for football fans. Really good and interesting. Again not one for reluctant readers or under 13s.

The above are all available in most newsagents and WMSmiths.

You can also get club magazines about some of the biggeer teams like Liverpool, Chelsea and Leeds.

And don't forget match day programmes, available if you're attending a game. They cost between £1 and £4.

Also, fanzines, written by fans for fans can be bought around the grounds and in city centres. But beware some fanzines if you're giving them to your kids and you want to protect them from swearing and malice.

Happy reading!

FOOTBALL READING # 2

This is the second of ten blogs about reading football - one a day in the run up to the launch of the 2011-2012 Premier League football season.

The idea is to use these ideas to encourage children to get into reading through football.

One of the best ways of getitng your children into reading is by reading to them. Or with them.

I read with my daughter now, although she usually prefers to read to herself.

But sometimes it is still nice for us to read together. And the run up to the football season is a good time to do this, because there is a common goal (excuse the pun): your excitement about the coming football.

Can you find a book in the public library, a book shop, WHSmith or even one from home that you could read together?

Maybe a short novel by someone like me or Helena Pielichaty or David Bedford. We all write books that you could read for quarter of an hour each night for a week. (There is a longer list of authors you could try on the previous blog post.)

Maybe a biography of a favourite player.

A football fact book or quiz book.

One of the many football poem collections.

It is a nice habit to get into, especially easy if you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to have a bit less work on in the summer and bed times are a little later.

The National Literacy Trust have done lots of research (www.literacytrust.org.uk) that proves reading with your child even after the age they can read for themselves is likely to make them do better at school, enjoy reading more, be happier and be closer to their parents.

Borrow or buy a book now and read it in the run up to the football season.

FOOTBALL READING # 1

This is the first of ten short blogs - one a day - in the run up to the Premier League football season that kicks off on Saturday 13th August.

Each blog will focus on something you can with your children to get you all into reading through football.

DAY ONE

Over the next ten days I'll be talking about great football reading in magazines, online, books and in newspapers. Stuff that will get you in the mood for the football season - and that will get you in the mood for reading all year round too.

There is one place you can get access to all the above kinds of reading. For free.

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Here's a list of the football reading you can find in the library:

* biographies of players (Biography)

* access to thousands of football websites: from BBC Sport to your favourite team (Online)

* books on how to play football (Sport, or Junior Sport)

* adult football stories, like The Damned United and Football Factory (Fiction)

* free newspapers - national and local (usually in the Reference section)

* books about football teams and history (Sport)

* magazines - some libraries have copies of Match, Match of the Day and FourFourTwo

* football stories by authors like Helena Pielichaty, Dan Freedman, Bali Rai, Narinder Dhami, Michael Coleman, David Bedford, Alan Gibbons, Mal Peet, and, er... TOM PALMER (in Children's Fiction)

I do loads of football reading in the library and it costs me nothing.

If you need advice in the library ask a librarian. They want to help. Tell them I sent you!

Part two of this blog will be posted tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Reading Comedians

I've noticed something about children's reading habits that I'd not spotted before.

When I go into schools I ask kids what they like to read. In the last five years I've had at least 50,000 responses from the 300,000 kids I've spoken to.

The big names are always the same:

Jacqueline Wilson

Michael Morpurgo

Roald Dahl

But - in the last year - there is a genre being mentioned more and more by year sevens and eights.

Comedians' autobiographies.

It started with the odd mention of Harry Hill, then Michael McIntyre (left).

I was at Noadswood School in Hythe, Southampton earlier this week. I asked the kids about it.

Out of 210 kids, at least 50 had read comedians' autobigraphies.

I asked them for a list of names of comedians' books they'd read. Here it is:

Harry Hill

Michal McIntyre

Ricky Gervais

Alan Carr

Russell Brand

Lee Evans

Jeremy Clarkson (!)

Ant & Dec

Peter Kay

Al Murray

So what are we going to do about it? We've used football to promote reading. How about comedians? Using their books and their appeal to enthuse more young readers.

Would the comedians want to help us? Of course they would.

One boy at Hythe suggested the comedian might like to do sketches around reading. Great idea.

One issue could be that comedians talk and write about stuff that some people might not want year sevens and eights to be aware of. But, let's face it, they are more aware of most of that stuff than adults are, so we need to get round that.

I'll have a word with the inspired staff at the National Literacy Trust. See what we can do...

We need more literary festivals

I was at Noadswood High School in Hampshire today.

Day one of the Wessex Schools Literary Festival, four schools working together to bring authors to meet children.

They are hosting author events with Ali Sparkes, Chris Bradford, Andy Mulligan and many more. All listed in a festival programme.

There is a festival read: I am Number Four.

Also: quizzes, a book v film debate, book crossing and other projects.

They have attracted support from Costa, Asda, Waterstone's and the local council. And many others.

I think this is a great scheme. To attract big name authors to come to four schools that are very close together is a great achievement.

The idea of a festival is powerful. It appeals to everyone. Publishers. Booksellers. Authors. Libraries. Readers. The media.

I think this is because when you focus a lot of activity in one place in a short period of time it creates a buzz in among all the players listed above.

When I worked at Bradford Library, putting on author events, I found it much easier to attract authors to the Bradford Book Festival that we created than for regular events during the year.

There is sometimes cynicism that there are too many literature festivals. I disagree. I think there need to be more.

I am a Dad Writer

I am normally described as a football writer. That's because I write books about football. But books about football are about more than football.

Take Mal Peet. His amazing football book Keeper is about rain forests, magic and ghosts amongst other things.

Take Dan Freedman. His football books are about relationships with girls, relationships with parents, etc.

Take Helena Pielichaty. Her football stories are about healthy eating, bullying, perceptions of foreigners and a hundred other things. As well as football.

Take Bali Rai, Michael Coleman, Alan Gibbons and a dozen others. We have our own obsessions that we pursue in our books just as much as we pursue football.

If you want to know what my biggest obsession is, it could well be dads. Being a dad. Being a son of dads.

I am a Dad writer as well as a football writer.

I had three dads.

I was adopted. My next mum and dad split up when I was four. Then, the dad who brought me up died when I was 21. That has made me think a lot about fatherhood. That all came to a head when I became a dad seven years ago. What sort of a dad should I be? Number one, two or three?

That was the time I started writing for children too.

My first book - Foul Play - is about a boy who solves football crimes. Spy and detective kids in books often have dead parents. It helps free them up to detect and spy. But I wanted Danny to have a dad he was really close to.

In Foul Play (and the other four books in the series) Danny reads crime books to his dad, who is blind. That's why Danny is so good at being a detective. He is empowered by the books he reads to his dad. They are close and Danny has to work within his dad's boundaries to solve the football crimes he solves.

In the Football Academy series I have thirteen boys, all with different dad relationships:

Boys United has a dad who backs his son all the way, but picks him up when he makes mistakes.

Striking Out has a dad that wants his son to give up football and concentrate on his schooling.

The Real Thing has a Polish boy and his dad, struggling with the bullying that the boy gets because of his accent and background.

Reading the Game is about a boy whose dad left when he was a baby and he's never seen him and he's not sure how to grow up.

Free Kick is about a boy whose dad wants him to be a chip off the old block, but the boy doesn't want that.

Captain Fantastic is about a boy who has a secret: his dad is in prison.

I am a football writer. But I am a dad writer too.

On Monday a lad came up to me at a school in Hull. He said his dad was in prison. He said he'd read Captain Fantastic. He said he liked it.

Summer Reading Challenge 2011

The Summer Reading Challenge is about to launch for 2011.

This year the theme is Circus Stars.

My daughter has already spent ages on the website making her personalised character and watching author videos.

I love the Summer Reading Challenge. It gets children into libraries. It reminds me that going to libraries changed my life in several ways.

Here's how:

One: when I got interested in reading about football, they had books about how to play, histories of teams, biographies of players and stories that my mum borrowed for me.

Two: when I was a more confident reader, they were there with books on all the things I wanted to find out about, like Hitler, body language, Dadaism, world religions, European travel, the pyramids, etc, etc, etc.

Three: when my dad was dying and I needed somewhere to go and clear my head away from home, I went to the library. It was my escape.

Four: when I was there one day I found, by chance, a rack of university prospectuses and one course about Modern European Literature that inspired me to take A levels and dream of doing a degree, aged 23, which I did.

Five: when I needed to study in Leeds - even though my degree was in Reading, 200 miles away - because my mum was dying and I had to be near her, I was able to get all the books I needed for the course in Lededs reference library.

Six: when I started writing I needed facts and ideas to write about. I got them at the library.

Seven: when we wanted to get our daughter into books and she wanted to read dozens of books a month, we went to the library.

I could go on.

Getting children into libraries to do the Summer Reading Challenge will create the opportunities for them that libraries created for me.

Check out the website at http://www.circus-stars.org.uk/. There's even a video of me filmed by my daughter, talking about what she likes to read.

Writing for boys - with the P.E. department

I joined in a great event yesterday at Ellis Guildford School in Nottingham. The idea was to blend a P.E. lesson with writing activities.

It lasted one hour. The boys were put in teams of five. The P.E. teacher did two ten-minute activities. I did two ten-minute exercises. After each activity the teams were awarded points, which accumulated during the session.

It looked something like this:

1: The teams had to bowl a cricket ball at a set of stumps. Each time they hit the stumps they were given a letter from a football team's name. The first team to guess the team won.

2: I challenged the kids to make up a story by (a) basing a baddie on someone they hated from sport and (b) asking the following questions: who is the baddie, what did they do, where, when, how did they do it and why did they do it. They then 'told' their story and were awarded points by me and the teacher.

3: Relay races. Points awarded for placing.

4: The groups read a one-page cricket mystery I have written. They had to guess who had stolen the Ashes trophy as a team and write an ending. They were then awarded points.

The whole hour was frantic, competitive and often confusing. But it worked. The children carried through the adrenaline of the sports activities into the writing. And that was the idea. To give them a deep motivation to write.

The prize for the winners was a book and a £10 WHSmith voucher each. We had a good budget. But, to be honest, they'd have done it without a there being a prize at all.