Book Attack: A fun reading game!
Book Attack, a fun board game aimed at getting young people reading, was conceptualised by youth giving a year of service as tutors in the Western Cape flagship project, YearBeyond. YearBeyond challenged the youth to find innovative ways to promote literacy and reading, and the group who conceptualised Book Attack were the winners of the Social Innovation Challenge in 2018. FunDza was asked to take the project forward and has developed the game.
Book Attack is aimed at children aged 9 to 12 years (grades 4-6), making reading easy and accessible, and encourages children to practice reading out loud while honing listening and comprehension skills.
Book Attack can be played in groups or in pairs. The object of the game is to reach the end of the board first. You gain points from answering the reading card questions correctly and then moving along the board according to how many answers you got right.
What’s more… it’s free to download so you can make a copy to use at home, at school, or in your afterschool programme! With the download you get easy to print on a printer in A4: the game board (2 x A4 sheets), a pack of 204 cards (52 chance cards, 32 spelling cards and 120 story cards), and instructions.
To play the game you will need to find counters (buttons or bottle tops or similar) and a timer.
#HappyReading #LetTheGamesBegin
Download Book Attack in Colour
Download the four files listed below so that you can make your own copy of this game. Included in the pack are instructions on how to make the game easily at home.
How to make Book Attack (colour)
Book Attack – How to play (colour)
Book Attack Board (colour)
Book Attack Cards (colour)
Book Attack – Colour (all docs – zip file)
Download Book Attack in Greyscale
Download the four files listed below so that you can make your own copy of this game. Included in the pack are instructions on how to make the game easily at home.
How to make Book Attack (greyscale)
Book Attack – How to play (grey)
Book Attack Board (greyscale)
Book Attack Cards (greyscale)
Book Attack – Grey (all docs – zip file)
Thank you to our sponsors – the Western Cape Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport and Community Chest – for funding the development of this game, and which has allowed us to release the game as a creative commons project.
Thank you, too, to the original Book Attack team members for the idea, which include: Asithandile Tyulu, Connor Hoedemaker, Ellenay Taylor, Moegamat Hermanus, Nangamso Matinyana, Okuhle Mwahla, Phegello Mphaga, Rebecca Esau, Somila-Sande Mgobozi and Thando Ngqwamba.
As well as the following for project management and the writing of the cards: Jacqui Dornbrack, Ros Haden, Zimkhitha Mlanzeli, Rinchen Van Rijswijk, Mignon Hardie, Dorothy Dyer, and other members of the FunDza team. Thanks too to Orli Setton for her design work and to Tony Pinchuck for his assistance in the production process.
A number of stories used in this game were adapted from stories produced through the African Storybook Project and Book Dash, both Creative Commons projects. These include: Foxy Joxy plays a trick and Why is Nita upside down? (Book Dash); How Toad got its skin, Chicken and Caterpillar, Children of Wax, Animals run away, Eagle’s Needle, Donkey and Ox, Lion’s fire sticks, Clever Jackal and Foolish Crow, and A tiny seed (African Storybook Project). We thank both projects for their amazing creative resources that are delighting children across the globe.
This game is released under a creative commons licence (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International – CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which allows any person to download and then make the game for non-commercial purposes.
