Tom Palmer (Children's Author): Writing for children

In this episode, Claire meets with the popular children’s author Tom Palmer. Currently, Tom is the author of forty-nine published books, including three Puffin football children’s series (‘Football Academy’, ‘Foul Play’ and ‘The Squad’) and a wide range of books published by Barrington Stoke.During his own school days, Tom struggled with reading, so his mum used his love of football to encourage him to read about his favourite sport in match reports, newspapers, magazines and books. This sparked his love for reading and eventually inspired him to become a writer himself.Tom began his career working in a bookshop and in libraries. He also worked for The Reading Agency and the National Literacy Trust before landing his first book deal with Puffin twelve years ago. He has been a full-time writer ever since.Alongside writing books, Tom visits schools and offers a variety of activities to engage the children in a positive conversation about reading and writing. He reads to the children, plays reading games with them and delivers writing workshops which he discusses in more detail during his conversation with Claire.Inspiration for his writing often comes from his real life – from his “complicated” childhood to his teenage daughter and pet dog Finn. Learning to read for pleasure gave Tom the “springboard” he needed to have a happier and more successful life, and he has plenty of practical advice up his sleeve to nurture writers in the classroom.KEY TAKEAWAYS• Read for pleasure.When Tom started secondary school, he wasn’t allowed to study English Literature or foreign languages due to his low academic ability in English and grammar. When Tom discovered reading for pleasure, this acted as a springboard helping him to improve academically and led to him becoming a much happier person. This is so important to remember for those children who do struggle with their reading and writing. Giving them opportunities to read about topics they love can have a significant impact. • Girls and boys often enjoy the same books.Tom has noticed that children are being encouraged to read more broadly rather than girls reading “books for girls” and boys “books for boys”. Tom has visited school libraries in the past that had separate sections for boys and girls, but he has been pleased to see that this is no longer commonplace. One publisher rejected a book that Tom wrote about a female footballer because Tom wouldn’t change his main character to a boy. It has since become his most successful book and has gone on to win four awards. • Organise a school visit from Tom. Schools can contact Tom to organise a visit through his website. You can also find lots of free resources linked to his books on his website. Many of his school talks are linked to World Wars 1 and 2, football and rugby, however Tom has happily focused on many different topics in schools. From his experience, school events have been the most effective when the children are familiar with him and his books as it creates a real buzz throughout the school. The first chapter of all of Tom’s books are available for free on his website so these are definitely worth sharing with your children before a visit. Teachers are welcome to email Tom with questions about his books too. • Advice to children who want to be authors. Write about what you love or what you hate. Write with passion. Write with power by writing about something that means a lot to you. Read lots of different books. If you start reading a book and you don’t like it, then work out why the book didn’t work for you. Was it boring? Did you dislike the characters? You can learn a lot from reading “bad” books to become a better writer. If you like a book, work out why you like it. Magpie what that writer does and create your own style from a blend of different authors that you love. • Writing workshops and engaging the children to write. Tom’s workshops are tailored to each school so that they link to relevant topics being studied. In one school, Tom and the caretaker buried some artefacts, then took the children outside with a metal detector to uncover them. Together they created stories about who the artefacts might have belonged to and why they might have buried them. When Tom is writing dialogue for his stories, he practises it in conversation first and performs it like a playscript to see if it works before adding it to the story.• Collaborative writing is the key to success.Tom improves his writing by working with other people. He loves running his ideas by children to find out what they want to read about and what interests them so that he can ensure he is writing for the reader and their enjoyment rather than purely for himself. • Top tips for editing.On Tom’s website, you can find a range of videos sharing tips for writing. His editing video in particular is worth a watch. Tom suggests choosing a couple of paragraphs to edit rather than a long piece of writing. There is so much that you can change so he suggests making the process more directed, for example: add 5 things to make it richer and remove 5 things to make it stronger. When you’ve edited your work, read it aloud. Tom edits a typical book around eight times altogether. He believes that if you want someone to read something, you have to look at your work from the reader’s point of view and prepare it for their eyes. BEST MOMENTS“Teaching is something I would like to do but I’m aware that I get the nicest bit of teaching… I don’t have to do all the admin, all the planning and all the marking.”“Anyone could be a writer if they want to be.”“I read the books that children had recommended to me and I realised that is what I’d missed out on… Writing for children makes me really happy.”“Sometimes I’ll go into a classroom and we’ll chat about writing for an hour. I love those conversations and I love being as honest as I possibly can.”“If you want to be a writer as a job, don’t give up. It took me twenty years to get published but all the books on those bookshelves in the library and in the bookshops were written by the authors who didn’t give up. For every one of them, there’s a thousand authors who gave up.”“Children’s attitudes to reading are growing more positive all the time and I think that’s because teachers are finding the time to read whole books. I don’t know how they do it because I know there’s a lot of pressure on them but reading a whole book with a class is wonderful and it’s really bearing fruit. It’s the engagement and the love for the story.”“I didn’t have any ambitions until I read for pleasure. Once I started reading for pleasure, I wanted to visit places. I wanted to try things that characters had done in books that I’d had no idea about. I wanted to experience things that I’d seen in books. I wanted to think about things in different ways or from different people’s points of view. All of those things made me have ambitions. Until I read for pleasure, I had no ambition or desire to be anything when I grew up.”VALUABLE RESOURCES Tom Palmer’s website: https://www.tompalmer.co.uk Barrington Stoke website: https://barringtonstoke.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/  ABOUT THE HOSTClaire Riley  Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.  The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.