Plan to bridge separation of service families with joint reading scheme

Reading Force encourages military personnel to share reading experience with families at home.
by: Benedicte Page

A new scheme, designed to bridge the divide separating military personnel serving overseas from their families at home by encouraging them all to read the same books, is to be launched in March.


The Reading Force project, which will be introduced at Hampshire's Aldershot Garrison, was devised by Alison Baverstock, a lecturer in publishing at Kingston University who is herself married to a soldier.

Baverstock was inspired to create the scheme following her own experience of having her husband away on a tour of duty. The family, she found, struggled to relate to one another during phone calls because of the difference in their daily experiences. "When your husband rings up from Afghanistan or Iraq, you have a very limited time to talk, but sometimes you just don't know what to talk about," she said. "Your existence can seem quite humdrum in comparison to theirs – and you can't ask them what they are doing [because military details are secret]. Being able to talk about a book we're both reading is great because it gives us some common ground."

Reading Force will encourage groups of family and friends of soldiers to commit to reading the same book, and recording their thoughts about it – whether by letter, email or in a drawing – in a scrapbook. Those away on tour will also get involved, helping families feel connected and to bond again properly when the tour of duty is over. "It can be hard for soldiers to feel involved in the family when they come home again," Baverstock explained.

Those involved can choose any book, though Reading Force does have a few suggestions: a picture book, a Meg Rosoff novel, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and a Bobby Moore biography. But what matters, said Baverstock, is that the book that works for the people involved and the situation they find themselves in.

Children's writers Jacqueline Wilson, Alan Gibbons and Lee Weatherly, author of Child X, have all voiced support for the scheme. Weatherly called it a "brilliant" idea, saying: "Sharing the experience of reading is such a great way for families and the wider community to feel connected – and getting to make a unique Reading Force scrapbook together just adds to the fun." Baverstock said she had had a "fantastic" response from authors wanting to take part in events to support the scheme, including a "writing day" to be held in Aldershot on 5 March. "There is a lot of empathy for service families, and of course at the moment they have a very high profile," she said.

Another scheme that works to link military personnel with their distant families through reading is run by the American non-profit organisation United Through Reading, which has a programme that gives deployed soldiers the chance to record themselves reading stories onto a DVD for their children to listen to at bedtime.


from: Guardian