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  Hello Reading Force families!  I'm Emma, I'm a Pad Brat and I will be writing a regular blog about reading and Forces life. I was relatively lucky, I only went to three primary schools, one secondary school and one college. Friends of mine have been to fifteen! As an adult I’ve worked in lots of schools running writing and drama workshops and worked as a school librarian and I’m grateful to the resilience that my Forces life gave me - I’m sure every Forces child knows the experience of moving to a new school and the challenges we face, but [...]

  Hello Reading Force families! I’m Pam, a proud and happy member of the Reading Force team and my role is Schools Ambassador. My role is primarily to visit schools to talk to teachers, pastoral staff and parent groups about Reading Force and the support we can offer to Service families. So far this year I have visited schools in Shropshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Hampshire - where next, I wonder? Visits to schools involve talking to a Headteacher, a Forces Liaison Officer or sometimes a SENCO who has been given school responsibility for work with Service families. I start by giving [...]

We’re delighted to welcome author Amanda Prowse as this month's guest blogger. I grew up in a house without books – apart from The Littlewoods catalogue and a copy of a Haynes car manual! My parents were young and working hard to support their four children and I don’t think they had the time to read at home. The day I was given my first library card was the day my life changed. I was six and remember learning about the Dewey decimal system and being told that I could choose not one, but a whole stack of books to take [...]

Bother, Trouble and an RAF childhood Flying and travel are in my blood – as the daughter of an RAF officer and a Canadian teacher, I visited four of the world’s continents before starting school. My dad was stationed in Aden long, long ago in the 1960s, and my very earliest memories are of this exotic, magical but sadly so troubled place. Slides that were made of wood as metal in that heat would have given your backside a nasty shock! Goats and camels wandering through the streets. The shark nets at the beach. And, best of all, a two week [...]

Hello Reading Force families!  I'm Emma, I'm a Pad Brat and I will be writing a monthly blog about reading and Forces life. School has been back in session for a month now and I’m sure there’s been some good times (friends, lunch time, home time) and some challenging times (teachers, lessons, homework!) so I thought I’d bring you a list of books to get you through it. When I was at school my Year 9 form tutor decided we should all keep a diary – at the same time I was enjoying reading The Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot. [...]

Hi! I'm Emma, I'm 27, a Pad Brat and I will be writing a monthly blog about reading and Forces life. To tell you a bit about my background: my Dad was in the Army, he joined the Light Infantry for almost thirteen years before joining The Royal Logistic Corps in 1995. Currently he's working at 237 Bde Sp Sqn RLC. My Mum and brother work for West Midland Reserve Forces & Cadets Association and I've spent some time in Cadets as a teen and later worked at the RFCA also! So we're still pretty embedded in Forces life! My main passion [...]

The Reading Force team asked me if I’d be available to work with forces children at Hornbill School in Brunei in March this year. As a forces child myself, I was delighted to hear more about Reading Force; how it encourages families to read together, talk about books and fill in scrapbooks about the books they’ve shared. Families do this together at home and when a parent is away on deployment or exercise. After our 16-hour flight to Brunei, we - Alison Baverstock and Elaine Boorman from Reading Force and I - were met at the airport and whisked off to our hotel [...]

Need some inspiration to choose a new book from the library or bookshop? We’ve picked a handful of books we think you’ll love. The Lie Tree, for teens and young adults, is the first children’s book to win the prestigious Costa Book of the Year Award since 2002 – for good reason! This Victorian murder mystery will grip readers of all ages. Jacqueline Wilson has a new not to be missed book – The Butterfly Club, about Tina, one of three triplets, heart-warming and engaging as ever. If it’s fast-paced action and adventure you’re after there’s the extraordinarily funny and original [...]

The vote in favour of air strikes against Syria had an immediate impact on one group of people: those charged with doing the striking. And while our first thoughts may be of aircrews required to carry out what has been voted for, and the wide range of people who support them such as ground crews, we know that the families of all military personnel involved in the campaign to defeat IS are immediately impacted too. Of course all potentially involved will have been on a high state of alert for weeks now, and that’s part of their role. In the run [...]

Now is the time to take out Christmas books from the library or dig out the ones you put away with the Christmas decorations last year – or treat the family to a new book. There are so many fantastic Christmas stories to get the family in the festive mood, and these are a few favourites from the Reading Force team. Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler Age 3+ Stick Man is trying to get back to his family tree in time for Christmas, but many mishaps stop him having a smooth journey home. Poor Stick Man is picked [...]