Dear Parent or Guardian

Dear Parent or Guardian

The 2012-13 football season is underway. And now there is more than ever 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 ten top tips to help you with the football mad children in your life.

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

2 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.

3 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.

4 Buy them a copy of one of the popular football magazines: Match, Kick or Match of the Day. Or
FourFourTwo for older children. Some of the major clubs also have their own magazines.  Or ask
if your local library have them.  

5 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.

6 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.

7 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.

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

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

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

Finally, read about football yourself. You’ll enjoy it and your children will want to join in too.

Best wishes

Tom Palmer, author of The Squad : Black Op, White Fear and other Puffin Books.
www.tompalmer.co.uk