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16Aug2012
How to use the new football season to get your kids reading for pleasure

Posted by Jim Sells

The 2012-13 football season is underway. And now there is more than there ever was for children to read about the game. From websites to fiction. From newspapers to magazines. Football can get your children reading for pleasure. Here are eleven top tips to help you with the football mad children in your life.

ONE: Set your home page on your computers to a decent football website like www.bbc.co.uk/football

TWO: Get your children on form for the new season using one of the guides to playing the game. The Usbourne Soccer School is particularly good. Also Know the Game: Football.

THREE: Deliver a newspaper football supplement to your child’s room on Saturday or Sunday morning to get them used to reading previews, match reports and groundless transfer gossip.

FOUR: Buy them a copy of one of the popular football magazines: Match, Kick or Match of the Day. Or FourFourTwo for older children. Also, some of the major clubs have their own magazines.

FIVE: Find one of the child-friendly autobiographies of footballers, full of statistics, pictures and clean stories. The most popular ones are by Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney, Theo Walcott and Cristiano Ronaldo.

SIX: Play one of the fantasy football games in a newspaper, which means you all need to keep a close eye on who is injured and who has been dropped from teams. Another reason to read the football pages.

SEVEN: Find some of the superb football fiction at a library (or bookshop) near you. Authors include David Bedford, Michael Coleman, Narinder Dhami, Dan Freedman, Alan Gibbons, Michael Morpurgo, Tom Palmer, Mal Peet, Helena Pielichaty, Bali Rai and Johnny Zucker.

EIGHT: Put football newspaper articles and match reports on the fridge and on the back of the toilet door,

NINE: Ask your school or public library to run the National Literacy Trust’s Premier League Reading Stars scheme. www.premierleaguereadingstars.co.uk.

TEN: Encourage a good male role model you know to recommend some of the techniques above.

ELEVEN: Read about football yourself. Just doing that will make children want to do it to.

Blog by Tom Palmer. Find out more about Tom and his books by visiting http://www.tompalmer.co.uk/.