Tom (who's a Leeds United fan, but we don't need to go into that!) freely admits he was never really any good at school, and that's why he knows that reading, especially for boys of a certain age, can be a real pain!: "I hated reading until I was about 17. I just couldn't get into it!" With that in mind, he's decided to put pen to paper to try and show that just because you like playing and watching football doesn't mean you can't enjoy the printed word too. In fact his new book, Shaking Hands With Michael Rooney (no, that's not a typo - more on this later...), is aimed especially at boys who'd be much happier on the pitch than picking up a paperback.
 | | 'Shaking Hands With Michael Rooney' |
The book itself is about an 11-year-old boy called Danny Harte who's a football star in the making. In fact he's so good that, thanks to his goalscoring abilities, it looks like his team's about to win the League! If that happens, then Danny will win the Golden Boot and that's where the problems start. You see Danny has what the medics call Essential Tremor, or what we might just call shaky hands! He's always had it, just like many other people, and it doesn't really cause him that many problems - but he doesn't want to go up in front of hundreds of people to receive the Golden Boot just for them to see his hands shaking really badly. So, Danny decides to do the only thing he can do - he stops scoring goals. The story goes on and, without giving too much away, a character (real or otherwise? You'll have to read the book to find out!) called Michael Rooney steps in... Author Tom says he hopes that as well as hopefully being a good read, his new book will also show that reading can be just as good a feeling as scoring the winning goal for your team! As a writer, he often visits schools and libraries in West Yorkshire and just as often he finds that boys are the least likely to want to sit down and pick up a book: "The big thing with boys is that it's much harder to get them into reading. There's a lot of stuff around boys about reading not being a cool thing to do. Also, if you're not a confident reader then it's boring! Until I became more confident as a reader I couldn't get through a page. I'd be bored by it. But once I learned how to read for the pleasure of it, it became a really important thing in my life. So this is aimed at boys in that way." | "It's not about being good at school or being really well-read, it's about expressing your passion!" | | Todmorden author Tom Palmer |
It was Tom's mum who ended-up getting him interested in reading in the first place - all thanks to football. Now, as a writer, he obviously wants to do his bit to give something back to the game that inspired him: "My mum realised that my only interest was football, so she used newspapers, magazines and books like this, children's books, to get me into reading and to get me confident as a reader and to enjoy reading. It was books like this that were the first books I read, really, so I wanted to write one like it. There are a lot of really good football stories about, but I wanted to write my own!" Tom's even included an 'Extra Time' section at the end of Shaking Hands With Michael Rooney which explains a bit more about what you can do if the thought of reading books still bores you: "It's about how to get into reading and writing through football. It's about ten pages at the end with a short interview with me about my favourite fiction and favourite football books. Then there are tips about how to get into reading and writing about football. Hopefully, that gives it something extra." And, though Tom agrees the book is mainly aimed at boys, he knows that girls are just as into The Beautiful Game as the lads - as the boys sometimes learn to their cost!: "I do something called the Football Reading Game in libraries. The game is a quiz about football, really: about newspapers, magazines and books. Then there's a penalty shootout in the library afterwards. I take a goal and a ball in, and there are usually two or three girls and seven or eight boys. The boys are always saying, "You're not going to win!" But more often than not it's the girls who do win! They usually do quite well in the quiz and then just slot the penalties away!"
 | | Tom: Football's the key! |
This is just the start, though. Tom hopes that his book will inspire boys and girls in West Yorkshire and beyond to get into reading - and by that he means really ENJOYING reading. Then, he says, who knows what the future might have in store?: "The main part of it is to become a reader, but part of the work I do [with an organisation called the National Literary Trust] is to say that anyone can also be a football writer. You love football? That's the most important qualification for being a football writer! It's not about being good at school or being really well-read, it's about expressing your passion...You don't even have to write books: you can write newspaper articles, you can go around Europe as a reporter, you can be a radio commentator - all sorts of things, all through being a writer!" So Todmorden's Tom Palmer seems to be doing his bit to show that reading should be less about hard work and more about enjoyment - just like scoring at Wembley (when it finally gets finished!), or even just a kickabout with some friends. It's certainly a goal to aim for! And just for that, we'll forgive him for being a Leeds fan... |
