Do the Summer Reading Challenge!

The Summer Reading Challenge is a fantastic way of keeping children interested in reading during the six-week school holidays.

This year the theme is Creepy House.

One of the first things my daughter wants to do when school breaks up is go to the library and join up for the challenge. She likes the free goodies she is given. She likes the stickers. She likes the books (usually). And she likes the challenge. Can she read six books over the summer break?

I have made a short video about Creepy House that schools and parents may want to use. In the video I talk about the Summer Reading Challenge and about how libraries are worth a visit in the summer. I also recommend a few creepy books that I have enjoyed.

Tom Palmer on the Summer Reading Challenge

The characters in my new book - Ghost Stadium - do not head for the library on the day they break up, like I hope my daughter will. Instead, they sneak into an abandoned football stadium on a daring camping trip. Unfortunately for them the stadium is haunted and they do not have a very nice time. On a more positive note, they help solve a mysterious unsolved murder. Ghost Stadium is published by Barrington Stoke.

Please encourage any children you know or work with to go to their local library and join the Summer Reading Challenge. It'll be good for the libraries, good for authors like me and - most importantly - it will be good for them.

Have a great summer.

Visit the Summer Reading Challenge website.

Olympic Football events in libraries

I am doing loads of events to help celebrate the Olympics in libraries this summer. Twenty eight in all.

I'll be running a special Olympic Football Reading Game: an easy quiz about things you can read around the Olympics (such as newspapers, magazines, online, books), followed by a penalty shoot out in the library, each featuring  different librarian in goal.

This is the schedule. I hope you can come and have a go.

If you need more details please get in touch with the library - or email me at info@tompalmer.co.uk

 

 

Monday 30^th July

10.30am                  Fred Moore Library, Hull

1pm                        Analby Library, Hull

3pm                        Hull Central Library

Tuesday 31^st July

10.30am                  Polesworth Library, Warwickshire

2pm                        Southam Library, Warwickshire

Thursday 2^nd August

10am                      City Library, Newcastle

11.45am                 East End Library, Newcastle

2.30pm                  Blakelaw Library, Newcaslte

Friday 3^rd August

10am                      Lower Kersall library, Salford

11.45am                 Broughton Library, Salford                              

2pm                        Ordsall library, Salford                   

Saturday 4^th August
11am                      Beswick Library, Manchester

2pm                        Longsight  Library, Manchester

3.45pm                  Levenshulme Library, Manchester   

Thursday 9^th August

10.30                      Bansolme Library, Hull

1pm                        Ings Library, Hull

3pm                        Freedom Centre, Hull

Friday 10^th August

10.30am                   Bedworth Library, Warwickshire

2.30pm                     Rugby Library, Warwickshire

Monday 13^th August
11am                      Hale Library, Trafford
2pm                        Coppice Library, Trafford
4pm                        Old Trafford Library, Trafford

Tuesday 14^th August

11am                      The Avenue Library, Manchester

1.30pm                  North City Library 

3.45pm                  Withington Library

Wednesday 15^th August

11am                     Wythenshawe Forum Library, Manchester

1.30pm                  City Library, Manchester

3.45pm                  Fallowfield Library, Manchester

Euro 2012 reading tips for parents # 4: LIVE FICTION

Sometimes it is good to have a story that is really relevant.

If a story is set now and is about things on everybody's mind, then it might have a chance to grip a reader more.

I call it LIVE FICTION.

For example, there are a few decent fiction books out about the Olympics now. Check out the following:

Running for Gold by Owen Slot
Cycling for Gold by Owen Slot
Danny Baker's Silly Olympics by Steve Hartley
Deep Waters by Robert Rigby
Running in her Shadow by Robert Rigby
Parallel Lines by Robert Rigby
Wheels of Fire by Robert Rigby

Also, my new book, Black Op takes place in the week before Euro 2012 and is set in Poland and Ukraine, where the tournament is taking place. A good one for children to be reading this week, perhaps...

But some readers find a whole book a bit too much to handle. That is why episodic stories, one short chapter a day, can work too. This is about as live as live fiction can get.

In conjunction with the National Literacy Trust, I have written one called The Great Euro 2012 Swindle. Well, the first chapter, anyway.

This is that first chapter of a story that is set for the duration of Euro 2012:

CHAPTER ONE

There will be fifteen more chapters, all published at 8 a.m. on the morning of each week day during Euro 2012.

To make it more exciting (and more of a challenge for me) the story will be written each evening after the day's games are played, after all the controversies of the tournament. Each will repsond to those events, meaning whatever is being talked about in the playground will be in the chapter.

The story is free. It will be published at http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/schools_teaching/euro_2012 and can be read aloud or printed out to one child, or to whole assemblies. Last the 2012 World Cup - over 3000 schools took part.

I hope this appeals.

P.S. I have not decided whether to follow the results of the tournament slavishly... or to change the scores so that England win. What do you think?

Euro 2012 Reading Tips for Parents # 2: MAGAZINES

Magazines are a great way of encouraging children to read. Especially if they are into football.

If you have football-loving children, then you will probably already know about Match, Match of the Day and Kick, the three football magazines aimed at children today. They all have special Euro 2012 editions out at the moment and would be a good present for children this Bank Holiday.

All three have lots of photos, statistics and quizzes, but may look short on text. They're great for the kind of children who really struggle with reading more than a page of a book without feeling it's a chore. But also great for more fluent readers.

There are some really good Euro 2012 magazines and books around this week that have a little more wording in them.  ITV, World Soccer, The Daily Express, FourFourTwo and others have produced special editions. They are in the newsagents and bookshops now.

These can be great as a way of encouraging reading in less-than-keen readers. Here are five ways you can use them to do just that:

1. Look at the fixture list or wall chart provided free with some of the guides. Put it on the wall. Challenge your child to predict who will win each group. Then suggest they read some of the content of the magazine to decide on how the results will go.

2. Show your child the two-page feature on a team in the magazine an hour before they kick off. Suggest they read about the team England is playing so that they are fully informed. Or read it to them.

3. Challenge them to a quiz. Give them the magazine for half-an-hour, saying you will quiz them on its contents (like, who is the top scorer in Spain, or, what colour is the Swedish flag). This could motivate them to read it - especially if you offer them a prize for getting so many questions right: something nice to eat or drink during the game, perhaps?

4. Stick page of the magazine around the house. On doors. In the kitchen. On the back of your car seat.

5. Show them the statistics pages in the back of most of the magazines. Stats and numbers are a great way of grabbing football fans' attention, to then lead them into reading some of the words.

Now you just need to choose the right magazine for you. You can read my review of most of the Euro 2012 guides here. I wrote these reviews with a class of year sixes in Essex, so they're about as honest as they could be.

Check out http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/schools_teaching/euro_2012 for loads more ideas about using Euro 2012 to encourage children to read more.

Football's Slave Trade

Sky is running a show at the moment called Football's Slave Trade. It's about unscrupulous football agents who exploit the enormous desire of young African footballers to play the game in Europe.

It is covered in today's Metro.

I went to Ghana in 2009 to research the issue, spending time watching football there and meeting young players. I was lucky to be hosted by the Right to Dream football academy, who do things the right way. I also read a lot of newspaper and magazine articles about the problem. Plus, a couple of disertations.

My book - Off Side - is about a young footballer from Ghana who is trafficked to the UK, expecting to play football for a Premier League team, only to find he and his family have been cheated. There is nothing in Europe for him and his family have lost everything.

Off Side is based on true stories I researched. Experts estimate there are over 7000 young men in Europe who have been trafficked in this way, many of whom are too ashamed to go home to Africa and end up involved in crime and prostitution.

Perhaps the most striking thing for me is that every few weeks I get an email from a footballer or coach in Ghana asking me if I will take their players to the UK and have a look at them. Because I write a series called Football Academy, they think I run an academy here in the UK.

I could quite easily set up my own scam. It shows how easy it would be.

FIFA, to their credit, are investigating.

This is the cover to the second Squad book, White Fear, due out in October. I received it today. I love it. What do you think?

Also, the cover of book one - Black Op - due in May.

The Danger Academy

I have written a special story for the National Literacy Trust's reading scheme, Premier League Reading Stars.

It features Danny Harte from my Foul Play series. In this story, Danny investigates a suspicious football academy that is taking players from all over the UK - who then disappear...

Read The Danger Academy for free here. And feel free to pass it on.

When Theo met Camilla

I had a brilliant time yesterday with Theo Walcott and HRH Duchess of Cornwall... Well, I was near them...

We were all at Arsenal's magnificent Emirates Stadium (my second visit this month: the first was to watch Leeds in the FA cup) to launch Premier League Reading Stars, the scheme that works with well-known footballers to encourage children to read for pleasure.

I've been involved with PLRS for nine years now, visiting libraries and schools taking part. This year I worked with top teacher, Diane Baker, to create the tactics book, a set of ten classroom activities. And with my wife, to choose some of the books, magazines, newspapers and websites that the scheme highlights.

PLRS is amazing. It's kind of what my mum did for me when I was 16. Nudging me towards becoming a more confident reader through my need to know more about football.

Everyone at the National Literacy Trust deserves great credit for the launch and the scheme.

And credit should go to Theo and the Duchess too. They weren't both there just to look pretty: they were both articulate and clearly passionate about reading.

And both very nice people, as I did speak to them both... briefly.

Year Six Spy Ring

I worked with my year six spy ring again today.

This is me and a teacher's attempt to work out ways we can get a class of children acting like spies, while also getting them into writing.

Today was about creating a narrative...

... and interpreting the raw material provided by a set of photos taken of a murder.

Part one. The children and I worked through a page from The Simpson's magazine (with the words whited out) to try and work out what was hapenning in the story. This went well. They were all familiar - and therefore comfortable - with The Simpsons and wanted to understand what Bart, Lisa and Santa's Little Helper were up to.

This was a warm up for the real spy work.

Part two. We gave the children six photos (see three of them above) of a scene involving four people.

1. A man and a woman have a drink together.
2. While the man is distracted, the woman slips a poison into his drink.
3. The man drinks.
4. The man collapses.
5. The man falls on the floor - dead.
6. The woman pours the remaining drink out of the glass.

The children had to work out the order of the pictures, working out the whats, whens and hows, then write a two-sentence narrative to explain what was going on. They wrote it in the form of a spy's report. Just the same as writing a story.

This worked well too. Linking the pictures and working out the questions arising gave them  good idea of how I put my stories together - expect they did a better job than me.

Part three. This is unrelated to the story, but still about spying.

We took the children outside and they practiced 'live drops', where one person passes a bag or newspaper onto another person, swapping an identical item.

This, of course, is how spies around the world pass information to each other...

The plan is to do spy/writing exercises. To see what works. And what doesn't. Then to produce a toolkit of how to form your own Year Six Spy Ring.

England in Krakow




I've been lucky.

In March I went to Krakow to research my forthcoming football spy book, Squad: Black Op.

The idea is that a group of five children - using the cover of being part of an England youth football team - are sent to spy on and stop a former KGB agent from attacking the England team.

In Krakow.

I chose Krakow as a guess. It might be the kind of place England would base themselves for EURO 2012, as it is quite near the border of the two host countries, Poland and Ukraine.

It has just been announced that England are basing themselves in...

... Krakow!

If you're heading to Poland for EURO 2012, I can recommend the city. It is beautiful and friendly.

Listen out for the trumpeter who plays every fifteen minutes from the church above. That trumpet call is central to the plot of my story - and has a great story of its own.

Squad: Black Op is out in May 2012, published by Puffin Books.

County Meath Children's Book Festival




Me and next to the pink palace feature in Ashbourne Library

 I was in Ireland today, invited to take part in County Meath's Children's Book Festival. And it was fantastic.

I did my Football Reading Game in Navan and Ashbourne libraries. Both superb libraries with excellent staff.

But the hightlight was the children. They were happy, relaxed, confident and lovely. We talked about newspapers, magazines and books to do with football.

There were even Leeds fans, which is always good to see!

The Fesitval is an annual event that tries to reach most of the 100+ schools in the county.

Festival poster

Writing about Norway

I've started writing Squad 2. I'm not sure of the book's title yet, but it's the one set in Norway.

I went to Norway last month to research mountains, glaciers, ships and other Arctic things. It was wonderful. I made notes, interviewed people, took photos and worked out what the story could be about.

Now I am turning all that into a story.

The book starts with the five children of The Squad meeting the British Prime Minister. He needs their help. he knows that only these five children can stop WW3 breaking out.

I like to get my settings right. That is why I spend large proportions of my advances on researching the places where my stories take place. Already I feel like the trip to Norway is paying off. Not just descriptions of mountains and fjords and a sky that never quite went dark: but how those things made me feel.

Being alone on the deck of a ship at the top of the world at 2 a.m. in a weird half-light that made every mountain and town seem like a ghost of a mountain or a town, actually made me feel horribly lonely and uneasy, not exhilarated.

These are the things I want to capture in the book. Real feelings, not cliches.

However, the kids in Squad 2 will have more scope to feel lonely and uneasy in the Norwegian wild, as they wull be being chased by a crazed American who likes hunting people, amongst other things.

Rugby stories for boys (and girls)

Lots of England footballers have written children's football. David Beckham and Theo Walcott to name two. Although it seemed to act as a curse for them, as neither made it to the World Cup finals.

Or was that a blessing?

There are - as we know - a lot of football children's books about. Pielichaty. Palmer. Coleman. Morpurgo. Freedman. Peet. Smiley. Arksey. Bradman. Etc...

But there is not much rugby fiction. I go around schools in rugby league country and where rugby union is played and often get asked about children's rugby fiction. Is there any?

The only one I know is The Flea Thing by Brian Faulkner. An excellent story about rugby league in New Zealand.

But in autumn 2011 Barrington Stoke will publishing a rugby (union and league!) novel by Tom Palmer.

Tom Palmer (above) is a rugby union England international. He has played for lots of top clubs, including Leeds Carneigie.

But it's not by him. It's by me (below).