Enjoying Reading through Sport

Download PDF version | Print this page | Email this to a friend | Read Digital Edition of Issue 10

Tom Palmer disliked reading at school but, through a passion for football, his mother managed to instil a drive and ambition for reading.  He is now a successful author and shares with Attain why reading is so important.

I am a children’s author who visits over two hundred schools a year, including many independents.  When I visit I always start by asking the children ‘Who likes books?’  Normally about half the hands go up, while other children make gestures to suggest they’re not sure.  Some, though, keep their hands conspicuously down. And they are usually boys.  If an author had come into my school and asked did I like books, my hand would have stayed down too.  Throughout my school years I didn’t read for pleasure.  The words reading and pleasure did not go together.  As a result, my mother watched me do increasingly badly at school, finishing with three O levels in a family that averaged nine.  Also, I lacked any general sense of ambition or drive.  Except when it came to football.  I failed exams.  I drifted out of school.  I was unemployed.  Things were not looking good.
So my mother decided to get me into reading.  Using football.

She started me with newspapers.  Then football magazines, football fact books, football quiz books, player biographies and fiction about sport.  It took months, but gradually I became a more confident reader. I started looking out for things to read myself. I became more able to concentrate on a book and read more than a few pages without losing focus.  My mother had encouraged me to read using what I was passionate about. And it worked. I read, not because reading was good for me, but for pleasure.  I became a reader.  Once reading came to me so did passion, ambition and drive.  And – later – a career in bookselling, libraries and writing.

The Passionate Reader
As a result of my experience, I believe that a person becomes a passionate reader not through thinking that books are good for them, but through reading about what interests them.  For me it was football: for others it can be rugby, wizards, dinosaurs, monsters, fairies, cars, ballet, horses, pets.  You name it.  In schools I host a session called the Football Reading Game.  Half quiz about football reading, half penalty shootout, it ends with a team of children winning a football trophy.  I talk a little about my books.  But mostly I encourage the children to tell each other what they love to read.  It usually works.

Stockport Grammar School recently emailed to say:  ‘After your visit it was lovely to hear the children’s excitement ...it was such a boost to their love of the written word and I cannot thank you enough.’  That made me feel it was worthwhile.  So did the comment from Nottingham High School: ‘The best thing was that it has encouraged some of the more reluctant readers in the group – especially when Tom talked about how he got into reading.’  If I can help enthuse reluctant readers, be it through my books or my talks, then I’m happy.

Practical Ideas
As well as the Football Reading Game, I and other authors have run some of the following activities that have tried to achieve the same ends.  Here are some ideas I’ve gathered:

• run an after-school football reading group for football fans only (sometimes mixed with football coaching)
• use older children to act as role models to younger ones, recommending books and other reading materials
• get the children to talk about their reading loves – and hates – in front of each other, be it books, magazines, or websites
• run a sports book display around time of tournament or big game
• invite an author to visit and talk about his books

Although schools can do excellent work to encourage children to read through sport, it is at home that reading for pleasure is usually kicked off.  These are the kinds of things parents can be encouraged to do (if they are not doing them already):

• read sport related newspaper articles with your children
• be seen reading by your children
• read books aloud to them from birth – and don’t stop once they go to school
• let them choose sport-related reading materials in bookshops and libraries
• see the Reading the Game website which lists books that famous footballers enjoy
• encourage them to email a writer about reading and writing and football – they’ll reply

There are hundreds more tips like these on www.literacytrust.org.uk – and some fascinating research on boys and reading in particular.

Empowered by books
In my first book for older children, Foul Play, the hero Danny wants to be a detective.  He learns all his detective tricks from the pages of crime novels he reads to his blind father.  As a result he is a skilful detective.  I did this because I wanted Danny to have been empowered by books.  Just like I was empowered by books.  Just like I think children can be empowered by books in schools and homes up and down the country.

Download PDF version | Print this page | Email this to a friend | Read Digital Edition of Issue 10