sport – ACHUKA Children's Books UK

Our Beautiful Game by Lou Kuenzler

July 5, 2021 By achuka Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 5 Jul 2021

They can take our ball, but they can never stop the game.

A timely, important and well-researched ‘middle-grade’ historical novel about the growth in women’s football on the home front during WWI. Publication of the novel marks the centenary of the FA’s shameful banning of women’s football in 1921—a ban that remained in place for 50 years.

Who better to tell you more about the book than the author herself:

A hundred years before the Lionesses, Lily Parr, Alice Woods and their teammates were proudly playing their beloved, exciting and skilful game. As men were sent to fight in the war, women and girls took their place in munitions factories. Football became a favourite pastime and, before long, they were creating all-female sides and playing public matches to sell-out crowds, overshadowing the men’s football.

“Absolutely magnificent! A glorious tale of football, friendship, feminism and social history”
EMMA CARROLL

Rashford – Tales from The Pitch by Harry Coninx

November 2, 2020 By achuka Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 2 Nov 2020

The story of how a boy from Manchester used his passion and his talent to steer himself on a path to greatness. This fictionalized biography is one of a dozen new titles in Ransom’s Tales from the Pitch series.

Each of the books in this series is prefaced by the words, “Some of the events described in this book are based upon the author’s imagination and are probably not entirely accurate representations of what actually happened.” Fair play; that holds true for even the most scholarly and highly-researched biographies.

This is a wonderful series from a publisher who aims to produce books that are non-intimidating and don’t look as if they are for struggling readers. “In short,” the publicity sheet says, “we’ve made sure they tread the line of being tailored to our readers’ needs, while also looking like cool, fresh, normal books.”

They’ve succeeded with this series. Harry Coninx, a football fanatic and sports data analyst, has produced a set of 120-page chapter books that will have children developing a reading habit in no time. The books are superbly designed, with striking cover illustrations by Ben Farr, that give each one a collectible, football card appeal.
Follow Ben Farr on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benfarr_illustration/

This title, which may already be temporarily unavailable, such has been the media attention the footballer has recently received, follows Rashford’s career from playing recreation ground football for Fletcher Moss Rangers to getting signed for Manchester United’s football academy at the age of seven, through his goal-scoring professional football debut right up to a game played in July this year under Covid restrictions in an empty stadium. As well as descriptions of action on the pitch, we get insights into Marcus’s relationship with his brother, and with manager Jose Mourinho.

Waterstones
Amazon
direct from publisher

Worth A Look: Winger by Andrew Smith

December 18, 2014 By achuka Leave a Comment

This big (400+page), chunky Penguin was on my To Read list when it came out back in the summer, but every time it rose near the top it was supplanted by something more inviting. Definitely one to consider if you’re looking for a male-voiced coming of age story.

The book was first published in the US in 2013. Here’s an extract from the New York Times Review by A J Jacobs:

Smith is best when writing about the exhilarating torture of a first crush. He captures the excitement even of chaste moments, as when Ryan Dean’s fingers interlock with Annie’s in the back of a car, “our hands resting on the soft fabric of her skirt where it draped over her thigh.” The tension was such that I had to skip to the end to see if they hooked up.

This is Andrew Smith’s sixth young adult novel — he is perhaps best known for “Marbury Lens,” a dark, strange tale about a teenager who is given magic glasses that allow him to peer into a parallel world of giant insects and clawed demons. But it’s a bit of a departure. For one thing, it’s Smith’s funniest book by far. With “Winger,” Smith has adopted a convincingly adolescent writing style. Our narrator has a weakness for one-word sentences like “Ugh” and “Crap.” He’ll use absurdly long hyphenated modifiers, as with this description of how the football players spoke to him: “in a very creepy Greek-chorus-in-a-tragedy-that-you-know-is-not-going-to-end-well-for-our-hero kind of way.”

There’s also plenty of meta-commentary. “That was a really long sentence, wasn’t it?” he writes at one point. Not to mention a bunch of gross-out humor, including several bathroom scenes and a “catastrophic penis injury.” And cartoons! Ryan Dean is a nascent artist, so we get drawings, Venn diagrams and charts, many of which deal with his libido.

How About: Josh And Josh – Small, Towns, Big Leagues (American Baseball)

December 5, 2014 By achuka Leave a Comment

In this age of satellite TV there is quite a substantial UK fanbase for American football and baseball. Finding good sports books for young readers is not at all easy. So it’s good to be able to recommend these small softbacks available from an independent American press. Jim Pransky, a professional baseball scout with the Tampa Bay Rays, writes a good clean American prose. Josh and Josh is a biographical study of two young Pensylvanian sportsmen. Pransky’s previous two books – Championship Expectations and Playoff Run – were fictional baseball adventures, ideal for readers aged 9+. The books were sent to me from America by the author himself and are published by an American publishing firm that is open about its agenda of promoting family values.

http://www.achuka.co.uk/reviews/?p=486