Tom Palmer, football books and a penalty shootout land in Bodmin

A football goal in front of Bodmin Leisure Centre isn’t the usual setting for a book chat, but that’s exactly where a class of children found themselves in the last week of the summer holidays, quiz sheets in hand and a football at their feet.

An author who once struggled to read himself

The children were taking part in a Time2Move session at Bodmin Leisure Centre when they were joined by Tom Palmer, an award-winning author based in Cornwall who has written more than 70 children’s books, including the Football Academy and Foul Play series.

Tom’s own relationship with reading didn’t start well. “I struggled with reading when I was young,” he says on his website. “I didn’t have the stamina to read long books. My mum got me reading newspapers and magazines about football to build my reading up. I liked them: they were about what I was interested in. Football.”

Booktrust has described him as “a true reading hero who has been responsible for motivating many thousands of young people to get into books,” and that early experience with football magazines has shaped the way he now works with children, visiting hundreds of schools, libraries, bookshops, museums and festivals every year. Bodmin Leisure Centre has now joined that list.

Quizzes, a shootout, and a reading campaign behind it

The visit wasn’t just a talk. Tom’s session ended with a football quiz and a penalty shootout, and by the sound of it, the football went down just as well as the books.

“Tom really engaged his young audience and, with a football quiz and a penalty shootout at the end, everyone enjoyed themselves,” said James Curry, Head of Service for GLL in Cornwall. “As the largest public library and public leisure operator in the UK, it makes sense for GLL to demonstrate that activity and reading go well together.”

GLL, the charitable social enterprise that runs Bodmin and more than 300 leisure centres and libraries nationwide, is an active supporter of the National Year of Reading 2026 campaign. James credited Andrew Varker and Cornwall Council’s library team for helping put the visit together, calling it “our first leisure centre author talk in Cornwall” and “a great success.”

Why GLL is pairing trainers with books

As a major National Year of Reading campaign partner, GLL commissioned new research into the reading habits of active Brits, which points to reading being considered a core part of the modern wellness toolkit.

Whether that translates into more author visits at leisure centres across the county remains to be seen, but for one classful of children in Bodmin, penalty-taking and page-turning shared a morning without any trouble at all.