I recently ran across an idea for promoting reading to men and boys. A library in England developed Football Family Fun Day with activities and games to promote the variety of sports resources available in libraries. Volunteer literacy programs could provide a family sports day where dads could come and play sports with their children --AND be exposed to sports computer web sites, high interest magazine articles, short stories, biographies, audio books, dvd's and more --all borrowed from the library,donated by your local sports store, a sports bar etc..
Other examples for hooking boys and men as readers can be found in the following article. The examples are British and Australian--but still can provide a few tidbits on how to reach out to fathers and their sons. We all know that we are more likely to read topics in which we are interested. To attract new readers, start with short passages from the Internet, stories from magazines and newspapers, and then move up to longer books all centered on their favorite topics.
To learn more go to the Florida Electronic Library and enter the full title of the following article:
Palmer, T. (2008). Reading the game: Using sport to encourage boys and men to read more.
APLIS, 21(2), 78-83
Once you enter the title, you will get the full text of the article through this free site provided by your public library. FEL provides access to articles that are found in magazines which are not freely available on the Internet.
Share how you encourage men who are new readers to enjoy reading about their favorite sport in our comments below.
Sandy Newell, President VALF
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