Free (nook/Kindle/Kobo/iTunes) Jamie Johnson: Born to Play [YA Soccer Adventure Tale]

[ATDrake]

Jamie Johnson: Born to Play by Dan Freedman, himself apparently a sports journalist, is a lengthy #0 prequel novella to his popular tween/YA sports adventure coming-of-age series starring the eponymous ambitious schoolboy who eventually becomes a championship football (soccer, not rugby) player, free courtesy of publisher Scholastic UK.

Apparently this was written especially for World Book Day 2010, according to the frontmatter, and customer reviews for the series praise its incorporation of realistic football-playing detail and insider sports references.

Currently free @ B&N (also UK), Amazon (not available in North America, but likely free in other non-NA countries as well as the UK), Kobo & iTunes & Google Play (all available to Canadians).

If it turns out you/any kids you pass this onto happen to like this one and want to try the full series, IIRC Scholastic books are couponable @ Kobo.

And this has been the (late!) selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

Mostly by default, really, since I just woke up and don't feel like digging through the slushpile to see if something newer and shinier popped up overnight just yet.

But it's nice to get a full (and fairly substantial, at 122 pages in iBooks) self-contained story as a series promo teaser instead of those glorified "first five chapters excerpt" things that publishers are prone to do, so I encourage this trend towards tie-in stories rather than the alternative, when not actually offering full 1st-in-series novels as a hook for the Gentle Reader.

Enjoy!

Description
The fast-paced prequel to the best-selling THE KICK OFF. Jamie Johnson is eleven and having a tough time. Bullies won't let him play football at break, his best mate is at another school, and he even gets picked on for not having a dad. But everything changes when Jamie realizes his football skills can take him further than he thought...