HORRID HENRY AND THE FOOTBALL FIEND (6+)
by Francesca Simon
Orion, £4.99; 112pp

THE KINGFISHER FOOTBALL ENCYCLOPAEDIA (8+)
by Clive Gifford
Kingfisher, £16.99; 144pp

FOR THE FEMALE HALF of my family, the World Cup is a cause for gloom and irritation as our beloved males turn into drooling, groaning, cheering telly-fixated idiots. So some children’s books featuring football may be just the thing to remind them that there is more to life than Wayne Rooney.

Sally Gardner’s The Boy with the Lightning Feet is the sixth in her “Magical Children” series. The author suffered wretchedly at school as a dyslexic before emerging as one of our most gifted children’s writers and illustrators. Her picture books and novels have grown in originality and confidence until the magnificent I, Coriander, published last year, became an international bestseller.

Timid Timmy Twinkle has everything against him. His mum has decided to “up sticks and start a new life in Spain”, his grandma has dropped down dead, his grandpa is so depressed that he never speaks and is fat. Naturally, he is also bullied, and gets even fatter because his one comfort is Gramps’s baking.

Then he finds an old photograph album with a picture of a boy who was a champion footballer before the First World War. This was Timmy’s great great uncle Vernon, who was also once chubby and bullied until his “twinkle toes” turned him into an ancestor to be proud of.

Inspired, Timmy volunteers as a reserve player, and despite humiliation manages to kick the ball into the goal “just like Beckham”. That evening, as he goes home, he meets a boy in old-fashioned clothes who asks him if he would like to play some footie.

For the first time in his life, Timmy forgets about food and plays the beautiful game. Here, as in Mal Peet’s classic Keeper, football is a metaphor for life that can also change life.

The mysterious boy tells him that “you could be better than me, live longer, be a real star . . . you have lightning in your feet”. So it proves, and he goes from zero to hero.

Gardner’s timely, touching tale, told in clear, warm prose, has all the satisfaction of a good fairystory, relying on simple wisdom and courage to sort out the hero’s problems. Timmy loses weight, helps his grandfather to get active again and slowly learns to stand up to the bullies once he realises that his chief tormentor is being bullied in turn by his father.

Horrid Henry, on the other hand, is never a victim. This awful child, whose adventures have now sold more than five million copies, is back with four more stories in Horrid Henry and the Football Fiend. in the main one, his arch enemy, Moody Margaret, vies with him for a special prize.

Each story has enough twists to keep bad kids shrieking with glee, and the illustrations of just how bad Henry can be on a pitch are brilliantly executed by Tony Ross.

But some of the most fiendish fouls would be hard for mere mothers to understand without The Kingfisher Football Encyclopaedia, which helpfully combines tactics, short biographies and useful links to the internet. It has only three pictures of women, and no mention of the film Bend It Like Beckham, which inspired thousands of girls to take up the game. But then, as World Cup widows know all too well, this was always going to be one for the boys.

What’s more...

KEEPER (12+)
by Mal Peet Walker,
£5.99

Gem about gawky Brazilian teenager who wins theWorld Cup.

FOOTBALL FEVER (10+)
edited by Tony Bradman
Corgi, £4.99 each

Excellent stories in three volumes.

MACB (10+)
by Neil Arksey
Puffin, £4.99

Echoes of Macbeth in haunting, gripping tale.

HOW STEEPLE SINDERBY WANDERERS WON THE FA CUP (12+)
by J. L. Carr
The Quince Tree Press, £6.99

Classic comedy.

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