Last week, I met and interviewed Tom Palmer, an author who develops and works on reader development programmes in the UK.
One of the things Palmer does is promote reading through football.
I attended a workshop conducted by him at the National Library and was inspired! My friend and I are hoping to launch a community library next year and I'm really looking forward to the workshops and programmes that we'll be able to run there.
Reading without books
AS a child, Tom Palmer (pic) hated to read. “My parents made me read what they perceived as ‘good books’, like the classics, which I just didn’t identify with at the time.”
Then, he certainly never have imagined himself having a career in reader development!
“I would definitely not have described myself as a reader,” he tells Star Mag during a visit to Kuala Lumpur to run reader development workshops for the British Council.
Luckily, his mother saw the “light” and stopped trying to make Palmer read books that didn’t interest him. Instead, she focussed on his love for football, and getting him to read newspaper articles about his favourite team, Leeds United.
“She started me reading short articles first,” he says. “It was really something because she didn’t like football but she made a real effort to look out for these newspaper stories and show them to me and talk to me about them. I then went on to reading articles in football magazines in magazines like Shoot and Match.”
Palmer was 16 at this point and it was his failure to obtain enough ‘O’ levels to be accepted to do his ‘A’ levels that made his mother work actively on his reading.
“She succeeded ... it took time, but I eventually progressed from articles to books. And I liked anything with lists of facts. After that I went on to read more broadly. And when I was 19 or 20, I took night classes and did my ‘A’ levels.”
His mother would have been proud to see how he is now encouraging boys to read. However, she died when he was 25.
“She would have been very pleased,” Palmer, now 39, says with a smile, adding that it was parenthood (he has a three-year-old daughter, Iris) that made him think of working with children.
In fact, things have come full circle for him. Not only has he written two football books, including one for children called Shaking Hands with Michael Rooney, he also runs Football Reading Games in libraries and schools. These are workshops that use football to encourage children to read: He is passionate about the ability to engage children by tapping their passions and football happens to border on obsession with many young (and old) Britons.
“I do a quiz about football,” Palmer adds, “and it ends with a penalty shootout.”
He notes that the Football Games are attended by girls as well as boys. “Girls are interested in football, too, and the boys always expect them to lose in the shoot-out. But the girls end up winning nine out of 10 times. I think it’s because the boys are so complacent.”
Palmer is also involved in the Premier League Reading Stars programme, in which the National Literacy Trust, the Premier League and the Football Foundation join forces to promote reading by, among other things, getting premier league footballers to recommend books.
Although he has exposed Iris to football, he admits that the books he chooses are typically “girlie” ones.
“Angelina Ballerina is what she’s into now,” Palmer says, looking sheepish. “I have tried reading to her stories that are traditionally more boy-oriented – about dinosaurs and such – but she seems to lean towards fairies and princesses and ballet. It must be partly peer pressure and social conditioning, and my wife and I might also unconsciously be influencing her tastes.”
Neither does he discount a genetic predisposition to certain topics. “I took her to a football match and she spent the whole time looking at the mascot!”
The bottom line, however, is that Iris enjoys being read to and, hopefully, this will later translate into an interest in reading.
“Often, all it takes is to allow children to make their own reading choices,” says Palmer. “It’s logical, really. Why would a child or anyone read a book that they find boring? It makes all the difference to identify a subject of interest and use it to lead to reading. Reading is not really perceived as a cool activity, apart from when it’s something like the Harry Potter books – whenever one comes out, it’s carried around like a fashion accessory. So it’s a bad idea to force a child to do something that’s already seen as boring.”
He feels that reading must not seem like a chore. It should interest, engage and entertain so much that it is an effortless exercise. This can only happen if the children are encouraged to read about what interests them.
“Children have to be shown that reading isn’t just about (Jane) Austen or (Charles) Dickens. Reading a book about football statistics makes you a reader as much as reading David Copperfield.”
Palmer’s observation highlights one of the problems cited in studies on why boys tend to read less than girls: the subject matter they are drawn to and the kind of reading material they favour (for example, instruction manuals and comics) are often dismissed by educators and parents.
In an interview with the Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35057-2005Mar14.html), Lee Galda, professor of children’s literature at the University of Minnesota said, “A lot of teachers think of reading as reading stories. And in fact, a lot of boys, and not just boys, like non-fiction. But we keep concentrating on novels or short stories and sometimes don’t think of reading non-fiction as reading. But in fact it is, and it is extremely important.”
Palmer agrees. “It also affects the way children look at reading. I know boys who say they don’t read and dislike reading, but when you talk to them you realise they spend an hour every day reading blogs, websites, magazines. They do these things unconsciously and because the reading doesn’t involve a book, they don’t see it as reading.”
For him, the ends totally justify the means and he is all for awakening an interests in reading with audio books as well as films based on novels. He is also a fan of graphic novels and plans to use both the Stormbreaker film and graphic novel, based on the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz, in his work next year.
“It’s a great series of books – exciting, fast-paced and action-packed. When you think of a popular reason boys give for not reading – having no time – it follows that they would not have a lot of patience for thick, highly descriptive, thought-provoking books.”
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