News

19th July 2021 Life generally just rolls on. One often looks back week to week (‘This time, last week…’). Holidays and official festivals puncture time, seeming to last for ages and afterwards collapsing in on themselves. How we hang on to, and record, what took place is more difficult. These days photographs tend to be moments of instant recording, exchanged online and then lost. I don’t have the precious albums for our children’s lives that my grandparents did – that’s a job being saved for retirement. The pandemic forced us all to do things differently. It was in this context that we marked [...]

9th July 2021 We’re thrilled to welcome author and naval mum, Liz McKittrick, as our guest blogger. Liz wrote Valiant Tails: The Cat Mafia, which is the very first book to kick off our new column in Homeport magazine, in which naval kids tell us what they think of a new book. Safe to say, they absolutely loved Valiant Tails: The Cat Mafia. Here, Liz tells us about the bits of real life that inspired the story… be prepared for snakes! Hi! I’m Liz McKittrick and I’m the author of Valiant Tails: The Cat Mafia.  In 2009 my [...]

Reading Force is based on personal experience. As a family we found that shared-reading kept us in touch, both as a family and with our wider friends and connections, throughout our time in the military. When life was tense, or we could not be together, having a book in common really helped us remain connected. As individuals, we also found that what we had read gave us things to talk about with people we met for the first time.  Books provide neutral common ground. Now that my husband is a veteran, I am often asked which was my favourite posting. [...]

Here at Reading Force we LOVE World Book Day and are very excited that despite these challenging days of lockdown and home schooling the day is still going ahead on Thursday 4th March! The crew at WBD have put together lots of fun activities and events. The annual £1 book tokens can be used to purchase one of the £1 book titles or used toward the purchase of another book or audio book until 28th March. These are the books you can buy with your token… We’re pleased that for the first [...]

We are delighted to announce the launch of a new Reading Force initiative – online book clubs for groups of Forces children and groups of adults and, we’re looking for volunteers to run them! In many ways this is nothing new. Since we began – ten years ago this year! – we have been encouraging Forces families to choose and share books for fun, and as a way of keeping in touch with deployed parents and their wider families, and taking part in an activity that brings a strong sense of connection, reduces isolation and increases communication. These groups [...]

30th September 2020 In this blog Katie Salari, Director of Operations for Never Such Innocence, talks about the charity’s work to give military children and young people a platform to share their experiences and stories, and the 2020/2021 call for competition entries. In 2014, as Remembrance activities for the Centenary of the First World War began to take place, Lady Lucy French, saw that young people needed to have an opportunity to play their part in marking this important anniversary. Never Such Innocence (NSI) was formed and set off on a UK wide tour, engaging young people through [...]

During lockdown the Blakesley family wrote blogs for us about being stranded in the UK, unable to return to Kuwait. In their final blogs, Nathaniel, Paul, and Karen share what it was like to get back to Kuwait, what they read while in quarantine, and the impending move to Turkey… Nathaniel It took us over four months to get back to Kuwait.  But we are back now, and there is nothing like sleeping in your own bed surrounded by your own belongings – especially as that means access to all of my books. I’ve been selected [...]

In this blog Reading Force founder Professor Alison Baverstock talks about why reading and sharing ANY book is what matters… Which book should we choose to share? We are often asked by families to recommend a title for sharing. We are happy to pass on what others have enjoyed (David Walliams’ and ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ titles are always popular) and also offer suggestions on our website. But really, it’s up to you. We think choosing what to read is part of the process of taking part, and this often works best through a family chat rather [...]