The game has been around for centuries, played by little kids independent of organized sports and by professional athletes in international competitions. Light on equipment and reliant on plenty of energy, along with differing amounts of team coordination, it’s internationally popular. Do you call the “beautiful game” football or soccer? Well, if you’re in most parts of the world, from Brazil to Britain to Bahrain, it’s “football” while Americans, Canadians, and sometimes Australians go with soccer, itself a contraction of an originally British term: “association football.”
Now that we have that settled, whatever you call it, you probably know that the very big deal of the World Cup has scheduled many of its games in North America this year, giving soccer (and football) fans a good prompt to get reading more about the sport. Happily, there are plenty of new kids’ books to serve the interest!
From Nosy Crow, the picture book series featuring friends “Frank and Bert,” which are written and illustrated by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros, now includes THE ONE WHERE BERT PLAYS SOCCER. While Frank (a fox) is confident in his own playing skills, he’s been helping Bert (a bear) to learn the game. And then Barbara, an excellent player Frank has long admired comes along, Bert feels neglected…until Frank needs his help and then, as ever, the loyalty of their friendship means he’ll be there for Frank just as Frank is there for Bert. Barbara may have fine football skills, but nothing compares to the power of friendship.
MARTINA THE SOCCER STAR, also available in Spanish as MARTINA FUTBOLISTA, published in NubeOcho’s “Egalité” series, and written by Susanna Isern, illustrated by Marta Moreno, and translated to English by Cecilia Ross, speaks to gender equality and inclusion without letting go of the spotlight on playing soccer. Martina loves to play soccer and tries out for her school’s team. She makes the team—only to discover the boys on it don’t respect girls’ playing abilities and they aren’t very good at teamwork either! With friends, she starts a park team, and when the park team and the school team are scheduled to play each other, the question is put to the test: which team has the better teamwork?
Here’s a soccer story that mixes fairytale elements into the action: FARA, THE SOCCER FAIRY, by Elli Woollard, illustrated by Irina Avgustinovich, and published by Paw Prints, recounts a tale of a little fairy girl with a powerful kick. The apple and mirror important to the Snow White story, the pumpkin that appeared in Cinderella, and a troll are each featured, and it is the troll who leads Fara into a satisfying and satisfactory way to use that kick on the Happily Ever After football team.
Kalaniot Books’ A BRIGHT LIGHT IN BUENOS AIRES, by Santiago Nadar and illustrated by Paula Wegman, features a young Jewish boy who has a mystical light glowing above him. While this certainly provides some practical positives such as lighting dark areas, it proves distracting to his teammates on the soccer field. Weaving together aspects of Argentine and Jewish cultures, and using contextually transparent Spanish and Jewish terms that are further explained in the backmatter’s glossary, Dani’s story is one of self-acceptance with a larger message about each of us having a unique gift.
Turning to nonfiction, we have two more titles to get you up and in play. LET’S PLAY FOOTBALL!, co-authored by Irish athlete Gordon D’Arcy and Paul Howard, illustrated by Ashwin Chacko, and published by Little Island Books, provides young picture book readers with the basics of soccer in an interactive format. Play along as the text leads us in shadowing a pro in a championship game.
Older readers can explore the possibilities of HOW TO BE A SOCCER STAR AND OTHER JOBS ON AND OFF THE FIELD, by former pro English women’s footballer Rachel Yankey and illustrated by Sol Linero, one of the engaging middle grade informational guides in Nosy Crow’s series “How to Be a…”. Here we learn about playing the sport—and achieving professional standing–and also about the ancillary jobs it requires such as referee, scout, and even team chef! Stadiums need other types of workers, too, and so do audiences present for big games or viewing them remotely.
From Bert’s tentative beginning on the field to the host of possibilities soccer holds professionally, these kids’ books can help you toward building a team of kids’ books to inspire young World Cup enthusiasts.
