Jamie Johnson 1 – The Kick Off

The Kick Off by Dan Freedman is a football story for 9 year olds about a boy who gets one chance to show his new school what he can do.

Jamie Johnson plays on the left wing and he is fast. He has waited six months for these trials. Today is the day Kingfield finds out who he is.

It goes wrong from the first minute. His old boots have rubbed the skin off his heels. Everyone keeps hoofing the ball at him in the air when he needs it at his feet.

Dillon Simmonds spends the whole game knocking him over and calling him names. Then Jamie wins a penalty, and not one of his own team offers to take it. They all want that A team place as badly as he does.

What happens next is awful and very funny at the same time. His boot flies off. It goes higher than the ball does. Every single player on the pitch laughs at him.

If your reader has ever fluffed something in front of an audience, they will wince and keep reading.

You are right inside Jamie's head for all of it. He knows Dillon is solid muscle and calls him fat anyway, because that is the fastest way to wind him up. He also knows, privately, that Dillon was right about him being invisible all game.

So he shoves him. Dillon drops like he has been shot and clutches his neck. Jamie gets the red card and Dillon does not.

The one person he wants to talk to afterwards is his granddad. Mike played for Hawkstone United forty years ago and never tells Jamie what to do. That is exactly why Jamie tells him everything.

Worth knowing. There is a lot of name calling here and some of it is about how Jamie looks. Dillon's favourite is Ginger Minger. Jamie's dad walked out when he was little, and his mum changed their surname back to her own.

Jamie is thirteen, in a secondary school changing room, and self conscious about still looking like a boy next to the others. The football itself is dead easy to follow, but the world around it is an older one.

Football Academy: Free Kick is the one to line up next if they like being inside the head of a boy with a football future hanging over him. James is one of United's best young defenders and everyone expects him to play for England like his dad did, but he has started to wonder whether he even wants it.